Looking for Something?

Living Outside the Machine

Ashley Colby, founder of the Rizoma Field School, digs up inspiring true stories of resistance and restoration (with references to donkeys, elephants, and our 49th state).   Bill Kauffman, author and regular conference…
John Murdock
John Murdock
January 29, 2024

Ashley Colby, founder of the Rizoma Field School, digs up inspiring true stories of resistance and restoration (with references to donkeys, elephants, and our 49th state).   Bill Kauffman, author and regular conference closer, weaves Wisconsin professors of the past and the robo-umps of tomorrow into a seamless and side-splitting localist garment.  Rory Groves introduces the duo and ponders a porch free of PhDs.    

Highlights

1:30       Rory Groves, unlikely agrarian

Ashley Colby:  “Doomer Optimism: Life Adjacent to the Machine”

5:30       Adjacent, whether we like it or not

7:45       Donkey driving, mastodon ranching, hospitality boot camp

12:00    Alaskan laundries and cider-sipping city dwellers

Bill Kauffman:  “Off the Empire, On Wisconsin”

17:15    A thieving historian

22:00    Rural drama

26:00    Little things mean a lot

33:00    You’re out!

38:30    A midnight tale

Resources

Speaker bios and conference videos

FPR Books and bookshop

Conference co-sponsor Plough

Thanks to Wendell Kimbrough for our theme music

Enjoying what you’re reading?

Support FPR’s print journal and selection of books.
Subscribe
A stack of three Local Culture journals and the book 'Localism in the Mass Age'
John Murdock

John Murdock

John Murdock is an attorney and globetrotting localist who worked for over a decade in Washington, D.C.; left the Capital Beltway to write from a family farmhouse deep in the heart of the Lone Star state; taught law in South Korea; and then rode the housing waves of Boise. In 2023, John left the crisp dry air of Idaho and returned to the stifling humidity of his native east Texas. His writing is catalogued at johnmurdock.org.