For budding political economists

Having read Wilhelm Röpke’s A Humane Economy two months ago, I just finished John Zmirak’s biography of this monumental modern economist. Zmirak provides an excellent gloss on Röpke’s life and the development of his ideas while situating them in a pivotal historical context. I found it extremely helpful to have Röpke’s influence on the post-World War II recovery of the West German economy described at some length while also delineating the extent to which his ideas were not tried practically. I admired many of his ideas in A Humane Economy; now I admire also Röpke the man. I highly recommend both works if political economy interests you — which it should. Realizing both the crucial role of the market in our economic life and the limitations thereof is critical for any citizen to participate (and even, dare I say, to be able to partake) in political life.

http://politicaleconomicreview.blogspot.com/2014/06/having-read-wilhelm-ropkes-humane.html

Love Calls Us To The Things Of This World

 

The eyes open to a cry of pulleys,
And spirited from sleep, the astounded soul
Hangs for a moment bodiless and simple
As false dawn.
Outside the open window
The morning air is all awash with angels.

Some are in bed-sheets, some are in blouses,
Some are in smocks: but truly there they are.
Now they are rising together in calm swells
Of halcyon feeling, filling whatever they wear
With the deep joy of their impersonal breathing;

Now they are flying in place, conveying
The terrible speed of their omnipresence, moving
And staying like white water; and now of a sudden
They swoon down into so rapt a quiet
That nobody seems to be there.
The soul shrinks

From all that it is about to remember,
From the punctual rape of every blessèd day,
And cries,
“Oh, let there be nothing on earth but laundry,
Nothing but rosy hands in the rising steam
And clear dances done in the sight of heaven.”

Yet, as the sun acknowledges
With a warm look the world’s hunks and colors,
The soul descends once more in bitter love
To accept the waking body, saying now
In a changed voice as the man yawns and rises,
“Bring them down from their ruddy gallows;
Let there be clean linen for the backs of thieves;
Let lovers go fresh and sweet to be undone,
And the heaviest nuns walk in a pure floating
Of dark habits,
keeping their difficult balance.”

                                                                           -Richard Willbur

The Scholars' Lounge

Salve, Fellowship of the Alumni!

Elizabeth suggested that I choose a text to commence our new alumni blog.  I have chosen one of my favorite essays by Flannery O’Connor, which I posted below.  I hope that you enjoy the reading and I look forward to playing the game of conversation with you all 🙂

“The King of the Birds”

From Flannery O’Connor’s “Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose”

When I was five, I had an experience that marked me for life. Pathé News sent a photographer from New York to Savannah to take a picture of a chicken of mine. This chicken, a buff Cochin Bantam, had the distinction of being able to walk either forward or backward. Her fame has spread through the press and by the time she reached the at­tention of Pathé News, I suppose there was nowhere left for her to go—forward or backward. Shortly after that she…

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