Saturday Good Reads

“Some people got high behind the wheel, drove drunk, went too fast on curb-less country roads that seemed wide-open. They were heedless of pets and wildlife. Heedless of playing children.” Jennie Cesario at Dappled Thoughts has a recollection of a childhood tragedy.

“To return to the Church of England after floundering in the desperate waters of unbelief is akin to being rescued from drowning by clambering onto a sinking ship. It is neither a satisfactory nor permanent solution to the problem.” Joseph Pearce at The Imaginative Conservative on A.N. Wilson’s poetry anthology England: A Collection of the Poetry of Place.

Have you heard of the writers Susannah Rowson, Catharine Maria Sedgwick, Mari Sandoz, Anna Yezierska, Nella Larson, and Martha Gellhorn? I remembered Martha Gellhorn as one of the wives of Ernest Hemingway but drew a blank at the other names. David Mamet at National Review talks about great women writers who are forgotten or ignored today but shouldn’t be (they don’t fit the current academic or critical narrative). He also points out a meaning of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabinthat you never hear about.

A jury lobbed a multi-million-dollar grenade at Oberlin College in Ohio, and the story that began in 2016 reads like a contemporary American morality tale. A number of good accounts have been published; one of the best is “Ideology and Facts Collide at Oberlin College” by Daniel McGraw at Quillette. McGraw covered the story from the beginning. The college, one of its dean, and its vice president of communications didn’t exactly cover themselves with glory.

More Good Reads

Life and Culture

Why Men Can Speak on Abortion – Aaron Brake at Stand to Reason.

Wokeness and Legalism – George Yancey at Shattering Paradigms.

Marxism: A False Religion That Cannot Deliver on Its Promises – Bruce Ashford at LifeWay Voices.

The Crisis in Education Theory – Rafi Eis at National Affairs.

The Coming Millennial Midlife Crisis - Tim Challies.

Writing and Literature

Building Folklore Wealth – Jesse Hake at Front Porch Republic.

Charles Dickens Was Obsessed with Detectives, Too – Tim Mason at CrimeReads.

Art and Photography

A once-in-a-lifetime look behind Van Gogh’s Sunflowers – Martin Bailey at The Art Newspaper.

Wheels on the Prairie – David Rupert via Facebook.

American Stuff

Four Child-Rearing Practices Ben Franklin’s Father Used to Raise a Great Man – Annie Holmquist at The Foundation for Economic Education.

Building the Transcontinental Railroad – CBS Morning Edition.

Poetry

Floss – Anna Lena Phillips Bell at Literary Matters. 

Two Days in June – Joseph Mussomeli at The Imaginative Conservative.

Miklós Radnóti – D.S. Martin at Kingdom Poets.

Faith

The value of a single soul – Andrew Roycroft at Thinking Pastorally.

In Praise of Religion’s Dark Side – Willis Renuart at Front Porch Republic.

News Media

Why Facebook Failed - Samuel D. James at Letters & Liturgy.

Down to the River to Pray – Bethel College Choir sing in a grain bin

Painting: Man Reading in an Interior, oil on canvas by Isaac Israels (1865-1934).