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And My Axe
Can the tool that built America bring about her renewal?
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The Magician’s Bargain: Web3 and Music
“I know that I hung on the gallows for nine nights, wounded with the spear as a sacrifice to Odin, myself offered to myself” It is not a coincidence that the two most significant stage pieces of 19th-century Europe, Goethe’s Faust and Wagner’s Das Ring des Nibelungen, deal with what the famous Wagnerian C.S. Lewis described in The Abolition…
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WHAT CITIZENS SHOULD READ
Are college students too fixated on the news? Or not informed enough about current events? Does our round-the-clock media cycle make it more challenging to be informed, reasonable, responsible citizens? And what should we read instead to counterbalance it? This semester, I have the pleasure of teaching a course on the works of C.S. Lewis.…
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Mistakes in Metal
Josiah Johnston describes his journey through fire, from blacksmith’s apprentice to knife designer. “Black metal is hot metal.” This was the second time I’d heard the admonition since I’d begun my apprenticeship with the local blacksmith. Shaking my burned digits in an effort to cool them off, or at least alleviate some of the pain,…
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The Airplane That Was
How flying became so … pedestrian. In the mid-20th century, the aviation industry had reached a cultural and aesthetic pinnacle. Commercial airliners featured jazzy music, comfortable seating with dining tables, freshly cooked food and cocktails. Passengers dressed in fine clothes and expected to network and mingle at 35,000 feet. You could smoke! The Coen brothers’…
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Love Letter to America: The Photography of Robert Adams
Photos courtesy of National Gallery of Art
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Telos in the Chicken Coop
The recent growth of the homesteading movement has forced a rediscovery of classical metaphysics through the back door. Philosophies that were once buried deep within departments of theology and philosophy have been exhumed by the likes of Wendell Berry, Joel Salatin, the Catholic land movement, and any farmer with a YouTube account. It’s Aristotle made…
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The Death of Eccentricity
The most memorable teachers are the ones who defy normalcy. “On the last day of class, I’ll bring a tiger in here. Then I’m going to make it disappear.” I never thought a course entitled Survey of Ancient History would feature a living jungle predator, but the septuagenarian in front of the room sounded dead serious. The…
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High Tech, Low Life
The rise of the cyberpunk genre was startlingly prescient. From its inception, works of cyberpunk fiction served as a response to the visions of utopia offered by contemporary mainstream sci-fi. Its proponents include Philip K. Dick, Katsuhiro Otomo, Ridley Scott, William Gibson, and Mike Pondsmith to name a few. While the genre spans all forms…
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Renaissance for the Art of Storytelling
Who makes a folk story? Everyone—and no one. Folk stories arise out of a particular cultural context, taking shape as they’re told and retold. As a history professor and the lead game designer at Mythweaver Games, I often think about what I do in the context of generations past. Mythmaking has always been central to what…
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Pushing through it
“There are several great and unalterable dimensions that show a man’s stature. Pain is one of them… Tell me your relation to pain, and I will tell you who you are!” —ERNST JÜNGER Modern society has seen man reach the pinnacles of technological advancement, economic prosperity, and security. It has also fostered the weakest iteration…
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Just A Minute: A Micro-Interview with Marijana Petir
Croatian politician, former member of the EU Parliament, and advocate for Catholic values Marijana Petir offers her thoughts on leadership. Just a minute. That’s all it takes to read each installment of Beck & Stone’s new micro-interviews with some of the world’s leading authors, inventors, visual and musical artists, gurus, and civic leaders.Marijana, as a…
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Entrepreneuring Design
Thomas Watson Jr. of IBM was walking down Fifth Avenue in New York when a revelation hit him after seeing a display of Olivetti typewriters outside a retail store. Modern and astonishing in their elegance, both the interiors and the products looked like nothing he had ever seen before. That experience had lifted the lid…
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Quiet Patriotism and America’s Historian
Many “classic American films” take place in Chicago, Los Angeles, or New York City—but in my experience, America’s large metropolitan areas don’t paint the full picture of who we are. There is a real apple-pie slice of America hidden in the small towns I’ve experienced, and only one American historian really captured their humble grandeur.…
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The Picnic of Childhood
With my 18-year-old son packing for college this month, I’ve turned my sights toward tidying up the ephemera of boyhood: Lego sets, trophies, art projects, and special rocks. Among those tasks, I’ve had the pleasure and pain of sorting many, many photographs. That work has reminded me of one of my favorite passages on motherhood…
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On Earth as it is in Heaven
Art by Nikita Liskov
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Just A Minute: A Micro-Interview with Dr.Matthew Mehan
The acclaimed author of children’s books The Handsome Little Cygnet and Mr. Mehan’s Mildly Amusing Mythical Mammals soliloquizes on Shakespeare’s Hamlet. What fictional character do you think is most true to life, and what truth does his story illuminate? One candidate for the most true-to-life tragic character is Prince Hamlet of Denmark. His mysterious and opaque character, at once lively…
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Requiem for a Town Square
Photo by Fayetteville Free Library
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(Happy Birthday, Clint)
The Lost America of Eastwood’s The Mule In 2018, before my children raised the decibel level of the Cuff entourage, I went to see the Clint Eastwood movie The Mule—in part, because I am somewhat estranged from my own politically incorrect grandpa and his declamations. I loved Eastwood’s Gran Torino, and if I’m honest, just about every movie…
