Life Amid the Suicide Machines
JEFFERSON COUNTY, KANSAS. In small town America, business owners get to sponsor everything from the high school wrestling team to the "pride committee" chili...
To Hell with Earth Day; Long Live Arbor Day!
Once upon a time in America, schoolchildren celebrated a lovely little holiday called Arbor Day. The young scholars would sing songs about Johnny Appleseed, recite Joyce Kilmer into the ground, learn the difference between an oak and a maple, and bundle up against the spring chill to go outside and plant an actual tree.
A Call to Arms
JEFFERSON COUNTY, KANSAS. The review below was first published in the Intercollegiate Review in the fall of 2006. Look Homeward, America was my first...
Farm Stories: The Flag of Rough Branch
Drilling with the Pitchfork (photo by AMS)
JEFFERSON COUNTY, KANSAS. The call came from the neighbor yesterday at about four in the afternoon. Your cows...
Ohio’s Backyard Scientist
"Would that thou couldst last for aye,
Merry, ever-merry May!"
William D. Gallagher (the forgotten Ohio poet)
BURNED-OVER DISTRICT, NY--The clouds of April have scattered, so look...
The Decline of Middle America and the Problem of Meritocracy
I delivered a version of the following text as a lecture at Augustana College last Tuesday, April 28 (all errors of fact and interpretation...
Practicing the Discipline of Place
My "Place" (Photo by AMS)
JEFFERSON COUNTY, KANSAS. If you think I'm reprinting yet another old essay because I'm too lazy or beset to keep...
What Is to be Done?
On Amtrak Regional Train 130 Daniel Larison has written a number of related postings here (and here) and elsewhere that have insistently raised and...
Commencement Address
Take heart
though, for most of your triumphs, large and small, lie in front of you as well. Which is
just to say that you stand at a grand beginning, the cusp of possibility.
Community
JEFFERSON COUNTY, KANSAS. "Community" is a recurring word and theme on this stoop, but it's invocation can come in many undesirable forms: as a talisman against perceived...