The SS. Peter & Paul 2011 edition of Dappled Things has just been released today, featuring prose, poetry, and artwork that you don’t want to miss. Our offerings include a timely exchange between Villanova professor Robert T. Miller and John C. Medaille, author of Towards a Truly Free Market, in which they discuss which economic system, capitalism or distributism (the economic philosophy famously advocated by G.K. Chesterton), is most compatible with a Catholic understanding of the good life. If our troubled times have ever made you wonder about the economy, these dueling articles by Miller and Medaille should be required reading.

But it’s not all about the economy, stupid. The new edition is also thick with short stories, poems, artwork, and even a brilliant short play, that touch on themes far more important than money. Take Rosemary Callenberg’s “Dust,” in which she depicts, with unnerving realism, the inner life of a married couple struggling between hope and an encroaching sense of futility:

Ellen nodded, but didn’t say anything. They continued eating without speaking. When she finished, she carried her plate over to the sink and paused to look out the window. That was when she noticed the kitchen was dusty, too. It lay more thickly here, on the windowsill and the angel statue that stood over the sink. It covered even the leaves of the houseplant in the corner. Somehow that was the most depressing; that even this living, growing thing gathered a layer of dead dust. She blew gently on the leaves, but most of it stayed put. Grabbing a paper towel from the rack beside the sink, she moistened a corner and dabbed at it. A few leaves came off in her hand. She hadn’t remembered to water it lately. She crumpled them and threw them in the trash, suddenly angry.

Then there are poems like Ron McFarland’s “My Favorite Deadly Sin” and David Athey’s “Celestialness” that draw one to contemplate, by turns, the dark and light that meet in human existence.

Subscribers will enjoy all this and much more in a gorgeously printed edition that will at once adorn your mind and your coffee table. If you haven’t done so yet, we invite you to subscribe now.