News from the Front Porch Republic
Greetings from the Porch,
The church league softball season has commenced in our area. There isn't really a better way to spend a summer evening than playing bad softball with neighboring churches while the kids run around the surrounding field.
- In this week's Water Dipper I recommend essays about patriotism, realtors, and men.
- Adam Smith reviews Ryan Holston’s Tradition and the Deliberative Turn and considers how it might shed light on different flavors of localism: "Holston also explains why localism is not just a theory of jurisdiction and shows why there is in fact a connection between who decides and what gets decided."
- Eric Scheske describes his efforts to garden without effort or plan: "Rational ideas create hell on earth. Just ask a kulak. Or just ask the lettuce plants in my garden."
- Dixie Dillon Lane recounts what happened when she tried to round up some neighborhood families to crank ice cream in the park: "Whether the experience goes beautifully or our best-laid plans go awry, hand cranking ice cream with a few dozen kids is a whole lot more powerful than dithering in paralyzing despair. As always, and as we so often forget, the light wins out."
- Pepijn Leonard Demortier summarizes Leibniz's theodicy vis-à-vis animal suffering: "A robin or chicken that seems to die in a totally senseless way is viewed by humans only in its individuality, without seeing the universal order underlying this suffering."
- David Bannon testifies to the ways that wandering in nature can solace grief: "Put another way, in nature our grief is not easier but may at times be eased. Wandering grounds us in ways we may miss otherwise, providing unhurried accidents of clarity that assure us we are not alone."
Rory Groves, author of FPR books bestseller Durable Trades, has a new book out: The Family Economy: Discovering the Family as It Was Designed to Work. It's a slim, practical book that outlines why working outside the home became normal and how those who want to do so might rebuild a household economy. The Groves' own journey toward such an economy had quite humble origins (stories like this are why I had students in my environmental ethics course grow a plant in their dorm rooms):
Our first foray into a family-centered economy started, oddly enough, with a tomato plant on our apartment balcony. We were living, in many ways, the typical American consumer life: we bought our food at the grocery store, sported fashions from the mall, and shopped for most everything else at supercenters.
My wife, Becca, was working for a youth camp in Nebraska while I was managing a software startup in Omaha. We were apart for most of the day, often reuniting after work for a fast-food dinner and a few hours of television before going to bed and repeating it all over again the next day. We didn't have much in the way of attachments--no kids, no yard, no relatives nearby. Just the apartment. And a cat.
The tomato plant presented a bit of an encumbrance--to me, anyway. Now I had an obligation, something to tend. It wasn't even my idea: someone gave it to Becca as a gift. And now here it was, taking up space on my balcony. Little did I realize that the humble vine would change the course of our lives. Like the smallest of seeds that grows into a mighty tree.
Thanks for spending some time with us on the Porch,
Jeff Bilbro