Category: Letter from the Editor

I was talking with a homeschool mother recently and she told me that she had visited Britain. She was particularly impressed with Hadrian’s Wall, which was built during the Roman occupation of the island. Hadrian’s Wall is made of stone and runs some 84 miles, from Wallsend on the River Tyne to Bowness-on-Solway in the …

Years ago my curly-headed, blue-eyed little boy toddled downstairs one morning in footed pajamas. He watched Daddy fill his briefcase and leave for work. Climbing atop the sofa to wave through the window, he turned to me and said with authority, “Daddy go to work.” He slipped back down the sofa and went about his …

What does reason have to do with faith? What does the intellectual have to do with the spiritual? What does philosophy have to do with Christianity? These are questions that Tertullian, one of the early fathers of the Church, summed up when he asked, “What hath Athens to do with Jerusalem?” Tertullian’s question seems to …

In 79 A.D., the catastrophic eruption of Mt. Vesuvius in eastern Italy covered nearby towns in ash and completely buried many of them. Accounts of the ancient eruption paint a horrific scene: Volcanic pumice rained from the skies and waves of searing hot gas and debris swept over the nearby landscape. Thousands died where they …

God blesses some of us with vision and with lives of clear purpose and meaning— and to some of us he adds the time and opportunity to accomplish what we have been given to do. The life of Cheryl Lowe, Publisher at Memoria Press and Headmistress of Highlands Latin School, was this kind of life. …

In his new book, Out of the Ashes: Rebuilding American Culture, Anthony Esolen contrasts what Western culture was and what it is now by asking us to imagine a library in an old manor house. The lower half of this library would be stocked with books from modern Europe—”novels, collections of poetry, histories, biographies, travelogues, …

Most people think topsoil is just dirt. But it is far more than that. When people lived closer to the land, they knew this, but now farming is mechanized and we have an industrialized food system. To most people, this all seems just fine. Food is easy to get—and cheap. What else matters? What few …

I was listening to the radio the other day when I heard a story about scientists who were trying to revive the American Chestnut tree. You may never have heard the sad story of the Chestnut, but it is an interesting one. From Maine to Minnesota, the Chestnut once thrived in America. Not only did …

Modern education is all about technique. The prevailing thought is that if only the right “method” could be found, the problems would be solved; if a methodological magic bullet could be employed, all the problems would go away. And since a method is all that is sought, a method is all that is found. Those …

Over the last several years, I have planted a number of trees in my yard. I notice that when I plant a tree, it takes a year or two in order for its root system to become established. Only when this happens does it start growing in earnest. A plant has to grow down before it can grow up. …