The Place (and Place-ness) of Occupy, Ten Years On
Holding up a sign, sitting at a lunch counter, sticking a flower in a gun, setting up a tent, and occupying a space in the face state and corporate power is an act of utopian belief and faith. A belief, to go back to Berry's insight above, that something may not be--and should not be accepted as being--an economic, and therefore social, inevitability.
American Enthusiasts At The Gates: A Review of D.G. Hart’s From...
D. G. Hart, From Billy Graham to Sarah Palin: Evangelicals and the Betrayal of American Conservatism (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company,...
The Heart of Light and the Heart of Darkness
He is resigned to the inertia of the old Spanish cult, and willing to just let it fade away. The voluptuousness of European culture had no way to gain traction in the purity of the New Mexican desert.
The American Aesop
Hillsdale, MI. It is said that Aesop, despite making all his characters animals and thus avoiding being Nathan to his contemporary Davids, was finally...
DON’T SHOOT THAT MOCKINGBIRD!
Besides, the harshest criticisms of any place come from those who truly love and belong to it.
Life Under Compulsion: Music and the Itch
Like dew on the gowan lying
Is the fa’ o’ her fairy feet;
Like winds in summer sighing,
Her voice is low and sweet.
Her voice is low...
Twice Removed
Damn the lights,
unnatural, bright, coiled,
spewing white 15 watts.
Damn the halls,
with their smooth vinyl, soaked in bleach,
the stench of sterile rising...
Why We Need Jane Austen or How to be a Gentleman...
Austen provides something for which young people—even the jaded ones—secretly long.
Dirt, Dollars, and Devices
Holland, MI. I confess: I hate farms. I hate everything about them. I hate the malodorous smells that take days to wash off. I...
Mr. Sillypants Goes to Washington
In a folder of papers at my desk there are reminders of things to do sometime, although they aren’t urgent. Waiting to be filed...