News from the Front Porch Republic
Greetings from the Porch,
The mornings are brisk here now, and fall is in the air. We're enjoying the first fruits from the two apple trees we planted last year: we got eight this fall, and we hope they are a sign of things to come as the trees mature.
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In this week's Water Dipper I recommend essays about Luddites, reading, and selfies.
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Patrick Losique examines how different ways of furnishing and arranging a dorm room foster either isolation or community: "We have to be willing to do away with the small conveniences that highly individualized appliances supply. To simplify our lives is to make room for others to enter it."
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Elizabeth Stice considers what sort of space permits and even encourages contemplation: "Big thoughts need quiet and space, a 'clear, well-lighted place.' And for the biggest thoughts, sometimes it should also be an empty space, or close to empty."
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Nadya Williams apologizes for failing to respond to her emails: "The fact that a blank draft response message to you exists in my inbox suggests that I truly did press 'reply,' thinking to take advantage of the brief lull in household activity that generally occurs mid-morning. But then, I think, a little girl began to cry upstairs."
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Eric Potter reviews Christian Poetry in America Since 1940: An Anthology, edited by Micah Mattix and Sally Thomas: "While many recognize the limits of human language and the ways it has sometimes been used to harm, [these poets] see language as capable of naming (or, at least, gesturing toward) the dance of matter and spirit that constitutes human existence."
I recently finished Peter Brown's magisterial The Rise of Western Christendom: Triumph and Diversity, A.D. 200-1000. There are many fascinating threads that his narrative traces, but one that I hadn't understood before is the way that the "barbarian" invasions of Rome were experienced by most Roman citizens. Many of those outside the immediate sphere of Rome collaborated with these newcomers to establish authority structures that could replace the weakening empire. Brown argues that the image of destructive, rampaging barbarian invaders was largely manufactured by apologists for empire to try to keep local authorities and inhabitants loyal to a decaying imperial center:
We must never forget how intensely regional the society of the Roman West had always been. The empire governed through enlisting the support of local elites. These were members of the minor nobility. Their wealth and horizons did not extend far beyond their city or their province. They were proud little men and women. They were often less subservient to the court than were the grandees associated with the Senate of Rome and the imperial administration. The barbarian invasions of the early fifth century (and the civil wars that accompanied them) revealed the crucial gap between such persons and the central government: "the key factor in the break-up of the Empire was the exposure of a critical fault-line between the imperial government and the interests of the regional elites." Reviewing the history of the fifth-century West, Peter Heather has come to the same conclusion. In a pungent sub-heading, he summed up the fall of the empire in the West as "The Destruction of Central Romanness." By this he meant the loss of the ability of the Roman state, its servants, and those with an interest in maintaining the ideology of empire at full strength to impose their will on the "local Romans" of the provinces.
Thanks for spending some time with us on the Porch,
Jeff Bilbro