Greetings from the Porch,

Last week Mary Eberstadt was on campus to give a talk, and I learned about her fascinating project "Remembering Upstate New York," which is dedicated to telling the stories of this region. Here's how she articulates its goal: "The United States is polarized as never before in modern history. If Americans agree on anything these days, it’s that. Amid this ongoing cultural strife, the urban-rural divide is ground zero. Non-urban, working-class Americans, once considered prototypical citizens, are routinely condescended to and dismissed by their urban, white-collar counterparts. As collateral damage, the rich heritage of these regions outside the major cities risks historical oblivion."

• In this week's Water Dipper I recommend essays about Roundup, virtues, and wit.

• David Demaree ponders Wendell Berry's remarkable choice to leave an academic job in New York City and return to rural Kentucky: "It was the expectation that any young Kentucky man with opportunity would move to a city and take the highest-paying job offered. During the out-migration of the 1950s, nearly one in three Kentuckians in their twenties left the state to find work in a city. His decision to forsake that path and move back to Henry County baffled his neighbors. As one Kentuckian wondered, why would he give up the 'glitz and glamour' elsewhere to come back home to farm?"

• Sarah Ashbach considers what it might take to live well in a broken world: "One of Kingsnorth’s questions is whether it is possible for us to live fully human lives in this age. Mine is whether it has ever been possible to live a fully human life. The answer is: yes, once."

• Basil Rosa remembers when he took a boat across the mouth of the Mediterranean and reflects on the history of this crossing: "So many before me have made this crossing. So many died for control of these waters."

• Jesse Russell reviews Paul Krause's new book The Incredible Adventure of Passer the Sparrow and praises its imaginative vision: "Perhaps the transcendence of what has been called our 'technofeudal' age will be achieved not by the great leader, but by the little people, and the little creatures, who build alcoves for nature and life among the dead world of our hyper-technological digital age."

• Elizabeth Stice argues we should turn universities over to the fools who still believe in these institutions: "A successful university is an alma mater, a nourishing mother. It requires love to animate it and to make it work. It must be personal and particular. Maybe the fiscal, demographic, and technological challenges will weed out those who lack this love."

• Michial Farmer listens to songs about falling in love this week.

I read through Rerum Novarum this week in preparation for Pope Leo XIV’s anticipated release of his encyclical on AI and humanity. Pope Leo XIII’s encyclical certainly bears the marks of its particular social and economic moment, but its insistence on the human goods of work and property remain perennial. These are also particularly valuable as we reflect on the last 250 years of American history, a history in which the dream of widespread, productive property has played a key role (I’ll have more to say on this in a forthcoming essay). Here’s Rerum Novarum on property:

If a workman's wages be sufficient to enable him comfortably to support himself, his wife, and his children, he will find it easy, if he be a sensible man, to practice thrift, and he will not fail, by cutting down expenses, to put by some little savings and thus secure a modest source of income. Nature itself would urge him to this. We have seen that this great labor question cannot be solved save by assuming as a principle that private ownership must be held sacred and inviolable. The law, therefore, should favor ownership, and its policy should be to induce as many as possible of the people to become owners. Many excellent results will follow from this; and, first of all, property will certainly become more equitably divided.

Thanks for spending some time with us on the Porch,

Jeff Bilbro