Greetings from the Porch,

Most of the blueberry blossoms in our area got zapped by a late frost. That's been a disappointment, but now that we're coming into peak garden season, there are many compensations. It doesn't get much better than pizza with fresh homemade tomato sauce. What will be a little better, though, is the pizza we make when my peppers ripen in the next week or two.

• In this week's Water Dipper I recommend essays about Homer, Hopkins, and humans.

• Mike Thompson Jr. says goodbye to a granddaughter heading off to college: "Moms and dads know the feeling when a child first goes off to school. It’s the end of the happy chaos of raising children. But grandparents know that feeling too."

• Tim Milosch reflects on "America the Beautiful": "There’s a harmony between wilderness, city, and farm that Bates captures exquisitely. Separate any one from the other, and you have a diminished America."

• Elizabeth Stice has a suggestion for all those worried about machines taking over their lives: live a more interesting life! "If we cannot tell the difference between ourselves and machines, it may not be that the machines are 'that good.' It may be that our lives are that bad."

• Louise McCray takes Joshua Hren's new book as an occasion to ponder what reading is for: "Hren addresses our cultural moment through the idiom of corrective: great literature can help restore things that Western societies are losing."

• Elliot Drago visits the underground bunker that was supposed to keep the American government safe through a nuclear attack: "I know that the Greenbrier represents more than potential horror—it represents what Americans hope to preserve: our beautiful nation, one worth preserving."

• Michial Farmer listens to songs about Laurel Canyon this week.

I’ve been meaning to pick up Leif Enger’s new novel, I Cheerfully Refuse, for some time. I finally read it and very much enjoyed doing so. Parts of the plot are too indebted to thriller conventions, and I find the predictable techniques for keeping a reader’s attention to be tiresome. But Enger’s prose is delightful, and the Orphic motif lends heft to the story. As in Paul Kingsnorth’s Alexandria, the greatest temptation the characters in this post-apocalyptic world face is the possibility of easing away from the difficulties of reality. Against the lure of a drug that promises the sweet release of death, Enger’s protagonists practice a “vigilant and reckless” hope. Here is how Rainy, the musician at the center of the story, describes his bookstore-owning wife’s attitude:

Sunrise streamed through shoreside pines like evidence of something. Maybe our minds decide on things before we are aware. I knew already I’d try the Slates again. How could I not? The morning Lark bought her first large cache—more than a thousand volumes, a great risk for her—I said, How are you feeling? Her instant reply, Probably doomed and perplexingly merry, was a concise report of our handmade lives.

Thanks for spending some time with us on the Porch,

Jeff Bilbro