Cabrini Dreams
“You go two blocks one way, you're in public housing. You go two blocks the other way, you're at Banana Republic."
Ray Bradbury Turns 90
Raise a glass of dandelion wine to the dreamy kid from Waukegan, Illinois, who today becomes a nonagenarian. Herewith my appreciation of Bradbury from...
Robert Nisbet’s Quest
Seattle, WA Robert Nisbet's 1953 book The Quest for Community has rightfully achieved that rare and estimable status of "classic." What Nisbet saw more...
On Being Less than We Are
What you miss out on by not making the climb is too great a loss on such a morning as this.
Flowers (Potatoes?) in November? The Southern Tier Efflorescence
The dank and drear of Election Day and its hangover were dispelled by the appearance in my mailbox of books from two most...
Churches with Porches
JEFFERSON COUNTY, KANSAS. In the comments somewhere below, Prof. Fox mentions the regional artist John Steuart Curry. A fitting topic for my first foray...
30 More Years of Rootless Professors
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...
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.
The War Comes Home
This Friday, June 28, Copperhead, which Ron Maxwell directed from my adaptation of a Harold Frederic novella, opens in about 70 cities. A second...