News from the Front Porch Republic
Greetings from the Porch,
The newest title from FPR Books has a cover and is shipping in a few weeks. Kayaking with Lambs: Notes from an East Tennessee Farmer by Brian D. Miller will reward its readers with laughter, insight, and renewed attention to their own places. As Scott Moore writes, “What a beautiful and inspiring book! Brian Miller has given us a wonderful meditation on the glories and difficulties of life on his well-ordered East Tennessee farm. Chronicled according to the liturgy of the hours, Miller reminds us of the importance of learning ‘to walk and not run though the seasons.’ It is rich in both literary allusion and sober practical advice. Kayaking with Lambs is a celebration of the archaic arts, the joy of duty, and the rich rewards of the habit of attention.”
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In this week's Water Dipper I recommend essays about Friday night lights, an AI boom, and buggy lanes.
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Will Caverly describes the trade-offs he and his family make as they endeavor to homestead on their small farm: "Part of me recognizes that this piece is a list of excuses and rationalizations for what a future version of myself, or my children, might consider crimes against the planet. Or against myself. These are the compromises I’ve made to pursue a thriving homestead given my limited time and energy. They may not be the right compromises."
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Art Kusserow considers the dangers of narcissism while also holding out hope that some pschotherapy bolsters a relational view of the self: "Even in our modern age, then, it seems that Trueman’s 'modern self' as narcissistic echo chamber, unconstrained by relationships with family and community, has not entirely triumphed after all."
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Carla Galdo narrates her efforts to put down roots in a rootless world: "These pathways—of sensitivity to what forms us, of sticking rather than booming, and of being home-bodies for the world and other people—are just a few of the trails I’ve started to notice myself walking down, quite imperfectly, here in the Virginia landscapes where I make my home. Yes, it is a place I’ve come to from elsewhere, but there’s something about staying here that sets me straight, that reminds me of my provenance from God."
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Seth Wieck talks with Katy Carl about Fragile Objects, her new collection of short stories, and the role of place in the imaginative life: "Travel is for me a deep psychological cue that something noteworthy is about to happen. I’m attuned to the ways in which change of place represents possibility—and have frequently been in flight from the ways place represents limitation. But I’ve slowly come around to the thought that it’s in attending to limitation that we come to see human choice, and therefore character, most compellingly."
I keep returning to Wendell Berry’s essay “Sex, Economy, Freedom, and Community” as it delineates some of the core contradictions and tensions that lie at the root of so many contemporary cultural dysfunctions. Berry takes the occasion of the Clarence Thomas and Anita Hill hearings to meditate on what forms of communal life and art and culture enable relationships of trust and candor. In typical fashion, Berry covers a lot of ground along the way, including this convincing discussion of the limits of “equality” as a concept:
The idea of equality is a good one, so long as it means “equality before the law.” Beyond that, the idea becomes squishy and sentimental because of manifest inequalities of all kinds. It makes no sense, for example, to equate equality with freedom. The two concepts must be joined precisely and within strict limits if their association is to make any sense at all. Equality, in certain circumstances, is anything but free. If we have equality and nothing else—no compassion, no magnanimity, no courtesy, no sense of mutual obligation and dependence, no imagination—then power and wealth will have their way; brutality will rule. A general and indiscriminate egalitarianism is free-market culture, which, like free-market economics, tends toward a general and destructive uniformity. And tolerance, in association with such egalitarianism, is a way of ignoring the reality of significant differences. If I merely tolerate my neighbors on the assumption that all of us are equal, that means I can take no interest in the question of which ones of us are right and which ones are wrong; it means that I am denying the community the use of my intelligence and judgment; it means that I am not prepared to defer to those whose abilities are superior to mine, or to help those whose condition is worse; it means that I can be as self-centered as I please.
Thanks for spending some time with us on the Porch,
Jeff Bilbro