Over at The Front Porch Republic, Current contributor Elizabeth Stice pays tribute to small university presses. Here is a taste: It has become commonplace to bemoan the loss of smaller presses. The remaining large publishing houses seem intent upon as […]
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Wendell Berry on the difference between “training” and “education”
I was reading in my commonplace book this morning and ran across this quote from Wendell Berry. It come from his essay “Discipline and Hope” published in the 1972 collection: A Continuous Harmony: Essays Cultural and Agricultural: Training is a […]
David Mills loves Pittsburgh
When he was an editor at Touchstone Magazine, David Mills published a longform piece I wrote on the perils of providential history. He is now the associate editorial page editor for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. And he loves his adopted hometown. […]
Juneteenth has always been “distinctly local” commemoration
Historian Tiya Miles wonders how the celebration of Juneteenth might change now that it is a federal holiday. Here is a taste of her piece today at The New York Times: It’s been two years since Juneteenth became a federal […]
A conversation with Felicia Wu Song, author of Restless Devices: Recovering Personhood, Presence, and Place in the Digital Age
This week I joined Current editors Eric Miller and Felicia Wu Song for a conversation on Felicia’s new book Restless Devices: Recovering Personhood, Presence, and Place in the Digital Age. The entire interview is available to Deep Water and Storm […]
How small towns survive
According to writer Tim Holt, they need a “Plan B.” Here is a taste of his piece at Zocalo Public Square: Mount Shasta, California, and Ashland, Oregon did it right. Located in the California–Oregon border region where I live, they avoided […]
Philip Vickers Fithian: “The young American torn between cosmopolitan aspiration and more rooted satisfactions”
Today I heard from a professor who is using The Way of Improvement Leads Home: Philip Vickers Fithian and the Rural Enlightenment in an American history course. I am grateful for the way this book continues to resonate with people. […]
“His membership is not in a party or a public movement, but in Port William”
Wendell Berry’s Jayber Crow is one of my favorite novels. I first read it twenty years ago and revisit it often. (I think it might be time for another reading!) I love the way Berry once responded to writer Grace […]