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Wendell Berry 202

Taking a Turn Taking it on the Chin

But the attacks on higher education are also part of a broader trend, which devalues work itself, especially work motivated by love
April 26, 2025

In Praise of Old Fencerows

Within five years you could have a tiny piece of managed nature, in which more birds sing than you would have thought possible

Story of the Seasons: The Countryman’s Notebooks of Adrian Bell

Like the wonderful American writer Wendell Berry, Adrian Bell’s desire for a return to a more sympathetic agriculture is not born out of nostalgia

“Ordo Amoris” and ending Burnout Culture

Only then can attention and passion be directed in the most life-giving ways and only then can a healthy culture emerge from a disconnected and attenuated one.
March 4, 2025

Reflection in a Glass Wall

The reflection looked like a vintage motion picture, only without those stilted movements.
February 5, 2025

The AI Invasion: For Humans, It’s Becoming Harder to Write

No question about it: For writers like me, who would like nothing more than to do our own writing and thinking with dignity and intellectual honesty, it’s becoming harder to…
January 30, 2025

“As I Know by Love”: Wendell Berry’s Another Day

One might think that after forty-four years of writing these Sabbath poems, Berry would run out of things to say. But it seems that as long as the trees continue…

Saying No to AI in Education

To rush AI into the classroom or into daily life is to put student well-being at stake. And as Kingsnorth reminds us, refusal to accept certain forms of technology can…
December 4, 2024

Shopping Local in a Storm

I mourn the storm. It’s far from over. But I also do not mourn without hope.

The Very Online Culture Wars

The Very Online Right might be riding high now, but I anticipate that the election jackpot of the moment will not last and that this victory will soon look more…
November 25, 2024

Belonging to the Garden

I belong to this place—if not for the next thousand years, at least for the summer. In such a displaced age, even that has to mean something.

A Homeward Calling: Review of Tony Woodlief’s We Shall Not All Sleep

One of the novel’s achievements is the way that it unfolds this centuries-long story with both clarity and subtlety, establishing a clear feel for right and wrong while casting no…

Wheeler Catlett’s Love Beyond Organization in Wendell Berry’s “Fidelity”

Organized community events bring people together and are an integral part of forging strong communal bonds in a place. Like the law, they serve a purpose in a community’s ecosystem…

Southern Appalachia is a Place

These questions would cause little debate or consternation without the importance of place tethering them. And, despite the erasure of communitarian mindsets and regional identity, place still matters.

The Jigsaw Revolution: Finding Peace, Piece by Piece

The way of the puzzler is not about reaching a certain goal. If it were, the perfectly fine image would never have been broken up to begin with. The way…

Working the Soil in American Literature: A Review of Ethan Mannon’s Georgic Mode

Do we love the soil and the creatures put in our stead, or do we prefer the images our devices project at us? While the choice is not always so…

Every Day Do Something that Won’t Compute

How has your intellectual practice prepared you not just for success but also for failure?

Bjartur and Berry: Contrasting Visions of Community and Affection

Seen through his most redemptive lens, Bjartur stands as a cautionary tale for those who would pursue independence as an end in itself.

Working for the Life Beyond Words

In his brief and not altogether satisfying rejoinder to the question, “why write?” Berry says, “To serve that triumph I have done all the rest,” and he ends the poem…

Thinking About Wendell Berry’s Leftist Lament (and More)

[Cross-posted to In Medias Res] Wendell Berry’s sprawling, uneven, brilliant, and sometimes frustrating The Need to Be Whole: Patriotism and the History of Prejudice will likely not, I think, be…

The Long Row

So to all my friends in this haven, this meeting place, this village green—you lovers of federalism, distributism, neighbors, neighborhoods, regional accents, little platoons, and forty acres and a mule—happy…
Katherine Dalton
March 14, 2024

Walk Boldly, Darlin’ Clementine

Walk boldly. Whistle not, but do keep walking. Keep walking right on by it and let the dead bury the dead.
Jason Peters
March 13, 2024

It Started with a Dis…

The Empire did not fall the day Front Porch Republic rose. But in 15 years FPR has done much more than simply add weight to the human scale. It has…

FPR at 15: Friendship on the Porch

Friendship is, in fact, a vital key to any flourishing political order, for friendship is rooted in affection and a commitment to the good of the friend, which translates in…
Mark T. Mitchell
March 11, 2024
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