News from the Front Porch Republic
Greetings from the Porch,
This week we took a stroll through the nearby patch of prairie at Jennings Environmental Education Center. It is one of the easternmost prairies in the United States, and the flowers are in their full glory.
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In this week's Water Dipper, I recommend essays on leftovers, dumb phones, and waiting tables.
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Seth Wieck reviews Matt Stewart's recent book on Wallace Stegner and commends Stegner's enduring wisdom: "He thought of stories in terms of three generations of characters. Against the migratory and “formless non-communities” he saw springing up in California, he wrote stories to form bonds where no other bonds may be found. America has only become more mobile, less rooted, since Stegner’s death in 1993. An imagination like his, fictions like his – born from affection – may not provide us with data or answers but may help us feel 'somehow more substantial and less troubled, characters more permanent.' And they may show us how we can help the land we find underfoot become a beloved, well-cared-for place."
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Zachary Michael Jack wonders if we should divide America between two types of plants rather than politically flavored colors: "Is there a direct causal connection between America’s embrace of succulents and semi-succulents as houseplants-of-choice and the conspicuous mass movement of Americans to states with the least amount of rainfall? Maybe not, but the correlation gives us strong cause to consider."
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Ed Hagenstein relates how his boyhood move from Maryland to Massachusetts uprooted him from a thriving kickball culture to a land where the sport's joys remained virtually unknown: "What did they truly know about kickball – about the marvelous architecture of the game, for instance, in which we found a home and strove so purposefully as young athletes?"
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Michael Sauter suggests Doestoevsky shows us a new vision of "the Human Being" that remains essential to confronting the cultural and psychological crises of our time.
Eric Foner’s Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men: The Ideology of the Republican Party Before the Civil War is a fascinating account of the young party’s political platform in the tumultuous antebellum years. As Foner points out, political parties function best in a democracy when “political issues involve superficial problems, rather than deep social divisions.” The breakdown of the previous party system, and the eventual break-up of the nation, were the result of such deep divisions. Foner’s study focuses on how the northern states, and the Republican Party in particular, came to articulate its values. Among the highest such northern values were economic and social mobility:
Contemporaries and historians agree that the average American of the ante-bellum years was driven by an inordinate desire to improve his condition in life, and by boundless confidence that he could do so. Economic success was the standard by which men judged their social importance, and many observers were struck by the concentration on work, with the aim of material advancement, which characterized Americans. Tocqueville made the following observation during Jackson’s presidency: “The first thing that strikes one in the United States is the innumerable crowd of those striving to escape from their original social condition.” On the eve of the Civil War, the Cincinnati Gazette reported that things had not changed. “Of all the multitude of young men engaged in various employments of this city,” it declared, “there is probably not one who does not desire, and even confidently expect, to become rich, and that at an early day.” The universal desire for social advancement gave American life an aspect of almost frenetic motion and activity, as men moved from place to place, and occupation to occupation in search of wealth. Even ministers, reported the Cincinnati Gazette, “resign the most interesting fields of labor to get higher salaries.” The competitive character of northern society was aptly summed up by Lincoln, when he spoke of the “race of life” in the 1850s.
Thanks for spending some time with us on the Porch,
Jeff Bilbro