Like free books? (And who doesn’t?) For the next five days everyone can pick up a free ebook version from Amazon of my debut book, a collection of stories entitled “A History Remembered by No One: Stories by Sea and Land!” Each life has tied to it a history– but how much of each person’s…
Category: Politics and History
Salesman of the Year
The 2016 presidential primaries have scorched innumerable campaign trails across the nation, like so many well-meaning, patriotic arsonists. Fellow Southeastern Connecticutians might be excused from fully appreciating the quality and quantity of fireworks currently being set off in other parts of New England, upon distant New Hampshire and Massachusetts. Here, along the placid…
The Mystery of the First Peckham in America, c. 1637
February 26, 2016 Friday With a whole morning to fill at Turning Point as the world is asleep, Will busies himself: Yes, this lines up with what I found; I am focusing on the first three sentences written in the brief bio. I was aware of the birth date, (and possibly the ship…
Geertz and the Value of Thick Discription
written July 9, 2009 Unsatisfied with the usual, surface manner of anthropological study and interpretation, Clifford Geertz, in Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese Cockfight, suggests a new vantage of study, in which he borrows the term “thick description.” The value of thick description, in comparison to the “thin description” of simply defining a…
Lovejoy, Curti & the History of Ideas
written June 30, 2009 Arthur Lovejoy presents the history of ideas in his seminal work, The Great Chain of Being, as a continuous copying of old mantras in which rarely an original, “distinct” thought surfaces (4). Much of this derives from the confusion of world’s “isms” that must be broken apart and dissected into…
The Times Were A’Changin’… to Fit Profit Margins and Gauge Moral Worth
written June 11, 2009 “Time discipline,” as discussed by E. P. Thompson in “Time, Work-Discipline, and Industrial Capitalism,” addresses the shift of concepts brought about from early industrialization, from “task orientation” and “general irregularity” possible in an agrarian-yeoman society to a structured, “time-oriented” labor construct. Further, time discipline was the tool of an often overly…
Carl Schorske and Creating a Future Without a Past
written July 28, 2009 Carl Schorske cites Karl Marx in his study of Vienna: “when men are about to make revolution, they fortify themselves in the past.”1 Yet what if no past is available? The dream of rational liberalism, birthed in Austria following the 1848 revolution, could not be sustained in the cultural sphere…
“What I Know About My Culture, So Far”
written July 18, 2010 Fifteen of my sixteen family strands originated from the quaint icebox known as Sweden. I did some online research recently, to discover that the best of early 19th-century times paradoxically brought about the very worst of times. Peace, prosperity, and potatoes produced a lot more Swedes, who would later find,…
Incidentals
written June 4, 2016 Cornelius Cochran, besides having a rocking name, was known by my mother’s side of the family as the brightest known fruit on their limb, the polished family relation you set out for guests. Cornelius, you see, was a 19 year-old farm boy on his family’s homestead near Blandford, Massachusetts on…
Election 2012 Part II: Four More Years
written November 7, 2012 Shenandoah Elementary, a few blocks north from Magnolia Avenue in St. Louis, was in full swing by five in the evening to vote, when May and I (she choosing to make it a party with hip hop in my car while waiting). A good turnout in the dizzily night, all…
Election 2012 Part I: The Man of Hopes and Dreams Resided on Earth the Entire Time, But That’s Okay
written November 6, 2012 Today the American people (perhaps 50% of them!) will speak. More on this later. Not being called to sub at the high school, I am glad to have today for a little quiet reflection on this past national year, the time to take the political pulse of sites like Politico…
Mayor Slay Comes Calling
written August 5, 2012 As a child I loved the poet Shel Silverstein. My favorite of his poems, ironically, dealt comeuppances to erratic, irresponsible characters. I could see myself in their crises, I suppose. The long-overdue library book that elicits fear of punishment, or the grisly end of the pushy Pamela Purse. Today,…
No One Will Believe You 