It’s nurse Goodbody pulling up the drive. A Conversation with Bill Kauffman
Ingham County, MI, and Burned-Over District, NY Front Porcher Bill Kauffman’s 11th book, Poetry Night at the Ballpark and Other Scenes from an Alternative America, was recently published by Front… [more]
An Athenian Coup, or Slapstick Bedtime Story?
For tonight’s lesson, I said to my ten-year-old, tell me how the first democracy was created. “Sure,” she said, remembering our lessons past. “It was in Athens, about 2,500 years ago, and the… [more]
The Stalinists Take South Carolina, or Why I Love Berlin
Any expat will tell you that the longer they spend outside of their home country the easier it becomes to dispassionately examine the current events happening there. Last week my eyes fell upon the headline,… [more]
It’s nurse Goodbody pulling up the drive. 
A popular version of the undying nostalgia for a golden era gone by is the view that this era was a time when men were men, and children grew into adults at the proper time. These days you cannot go… 
BURNED-OVER DISTRICT, NY — As New Horizons races past Pluto this week, I offer this blast from the recent past, a tribute to the discoverer of the ninth planet (International Astronomical Union be damned), Clyde Tombaugh. The piece first appeared… 
I don’t really mind being everyone’s full-time unpaid employee. 
The responses from American Christians to Pope Francis’ encyclical Laudato Si’ have fallen into two predictable categories: Economic conservatives push back against Francis’ critique of “technoscience,” claiming that capitalism and technical innovation have made billions of people more prosperous. On… 
Laying hens, I warrant, are a vote for the long view. 
In the thirty years since writer-professor Eric Zencey first published his essay “The Rootless Professors” in the Chronicle of Higher Education, much has changed, and much hasn’t, regarding academe’s reputedly rootless ways.
“As citizens of the cosmo-polis, the mythical ‘world… 
The local library’s inventory reduction sale had progressed over several weeks from a buck a book and a dollar a DVD, to two dollars a flat, and finally to a free for all. There in the dregs was an egg.… 
Maybe I’ll just take the shortcut between the spirit and the flesh. 
Elections are here, but manure-spreading is nothing new. 
