Category: Place
Becoming a Perennial: A Conversation with Grace Olmstead
In Uprooted: Recovering the Legacy of the Places We’ve Left Behind (March 2021) Grace tells the story of her hometown of Emmett, Idaho, where her great-grandfather and great-grandmother lived and farmed, and where her grandparents and parents still live. Through...
The Dogma of Minimalist Drama
In his comedy sketch about “Stuff,” George Carlin joked that the whole meaning of life can be described as “Trying to find a place to put your stuff!” After all, that’s what a house is: it’s a “place to keep...
The Cost of Food in America
Americans often boast about the cheapness of their food. Here in the U.S., we spend less on food than any other country in the world (about six percent of our budget, on average). Even other first-world countries—like most European countries—devote...
Farmers and Humanists in an Age of Crisis: Technology, Death, and Resurrection
As a teenager at my parents’ small-town church, I heard men in business suits express relief that they made it out of the farm where they grew up. “I got out,” they would say. The implication: I moved up. I...
Desire, Duty, and Dynamite
As it becomes clearer and clearer that global climate change is dangerous and will require enormous efforts to protect human lives from its effects, the debate about how our individual choices and corporate efforts affect us has only gotten sharper....
In Defense of Localism
By Sean O’Hare In a recent piece for Arc Digital, Nicholas Grossman examined the viability of an alliance between left-wing identity politics and right-wing localism. Grossman ultimately concludes that common ground between localism and left-wing identity politics is an impossibility...
The Real Place for Conflict: On Keeping Controversy Close to Home
By Justin Frank Social media gives unprecedented opportunities to know about and engage in controversy. Many of these controversies are rooted in places far from us; involve people we’ve never met (and will likely never know); and grow out of...
Living Local Fiction
On first moving to Maine and seeing a line of tall ledges from a nearby road, I was enchanted, surprised. I’d never seen anything like them before: Mountains like waves of rock waiting to crash over the land. Not long...
Stop Making Hospitality Complicated
If you’ve ever watched any real estate programs on television, you’ve heard eager soon-to-be-homeowners lean toward the boom mic and say, “Oh, this space will be great for entertaining!” Everyone wants to be seen as the type of posh and...
Lessons from the Wreckage: Notes on Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria
Lessons from the Wreckage, Pt. I: A Voice from the Whirlwind He lays the beams of his chambers on the waters; he makes the clouds his chariot, he rides on the wings of the wind; he makes his messengers winds,...