Why should we speak of heritage, family, culture, tradition, history, and beliefs? What are these in the context of friend and stranger, of place and time, of technology and the natural world, of society and institutions? A Shanty Kingdom answers: These are the things that make us what we are “in the marrow,” brought to what we are “in the moment.” This is the realm that knows itself despite the distractions of a new century.  

A shanty kingdom is a place of conviction and compassion, of insistence on the higher ideal, of encouragement and celebration. It is a place of modest means ascendant through dignity and toil, and of open-eyed contention with hypocrisy. It is a place the beauty of which is seen in the blemished no less than in the pristine. It is a place worth gaining passage to—even if one returns to a different land.