monday
- 03.May
- MP call for papers
What are you eating, and what’s eating you? The MP Journal is seeking academic papers, book reviews and other well-written inquiries on the subject of women and consumption, with particular focus on women and food.
- 25.Feb
- On the stories April and Frank Wheeler told themselves
-
In “Revolutionary Road,” April and Frank Wheeler are a young married couple driven by ideas. The ideas they hold are of essence and forms, conceptions of things and states and realities that—for them—hold truth, greatness, and validity inherently within them. This essentialist thinking permeates the entire novel, as the couple desperately tries to avoid the [...]
tuesday
- 25.Feb
- Our want of stuff is fundamental. But complicated.
What happens when we internalize the ownership of property? Not just property, like land, but other kinds of property. Stuff.
How does living in an age of quick and easy “stuff” change us and how we move through the world?
- 02.Jul
- Wall-E, Pixar, and Hannah Arendt
-
I saw Wall-E with my family of five on Saturday, opening day, and was somewhat taken aback. I actually found it only remotely enjoyable (in that escapist, pop-corn crunching kind of way) because of the gravity – and the overt nature – of the message. In fact, I had my forehead in my hands and [...]
wednesday
- 26.May
- Domesticity and Progress: The Vacuum Cleaner Theory and other Thoughts
When we had no technology for “vacuuming,” the entire family might have been involved in the beating of the rugs. Then, along comes the invention of the vacuum cleaner.
- 05.May
- Domesticity and Home Part II
-
McKeon, Michael. The Secret History of Domesticity: Public, Private, and the Division of Knowledge.” Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005. I was very excited and somewhat saddened to find this book. Excited, because it seems to be in the vein of thought that I am searching for; and saddened because, original contribution being a [...]
thursday
- 29.Apr
- Domestic Practices: the research question
My grandfather was not pleased when my dad brought him the top-of-the-line convection microwave oven that would come to be a pivotal force in his kitchen for the next 15 years. Whatever he sensed is what I hope to explore.
- 10.Jan
- A Poem for Pantagruel
-
Institutions crumble under the big foot of man But when he sits; rests, too long he builds them tall by hand
friday
- 19.May
- Stories & Community
On the necessity of recording community narratives: “all communities tell stories about themselves, about the distinctive nature of their formation and achievements. These stories can have a powerful role in constituting our identities, and so in defining and sustaining our common life. But they are also subject to endless manipulation, for it will always be in the interests of the powerful — rulers and opinion-formers alike — that certain stories should be remembered, and in certain ways, and that other stories should be forgotten.”
- 22.Jul
- An Ancient Bouquet
-
The last workbook of Greek and Roman Culture asked us to write an essay on some of the most influential ideologies that we had encountered while journeying through ancient Greece and into the Roman Empire. We were asked to “pluck a bouquet” of insights that we found applicable today. I usually have a zero tolerance [...]
saturday
- 29.May
- On the Woes of Curriculum Design
Trying to build a mightily interdisciplinary degree in memory and narrative that is a seamless blend of theory and method at the interstice of ethnography and oral history is proving damn difficult. In fact, I can’t even say it. Maybe I should say to hell with these disciplinary considerations, forever relegate myself to the title of ‘phenomenologist with an audio recorder,’ and just read Heidegger for the next 18 months.
- 24.Feb
- Place makes “a people”
-
The introduction to the book “Community and the Politics of Place” begins with a discussion of the similarities and differences between the Montana constitution and the US Constitution. The author sets up the idea that place (that is, the rolling plains and majestic mountains mentioned in the document) had much to do with how and [...]
Perishable Things
Plato thought ignorance drives man's “pursuit of perishable things,” and Ovid saw man's “damned desire of having” as part cause of mankind's decline from the golden age.I must respectfully disagree.
The stories we tell ourselves, the place we inhabit, the things we make and acquire — these are perishable things. Through their pursuit, we chart our identity and construct our society.
Hello.
Current Projects
The Why Here | Why Now Project is an attempt to explore community through a series of first person narratives and documentary photography. It is made for listening and looking.
Elsewhere
See my articles at the Yellow Springs News, a one hundred and thirty year-old independent weekly journal of news and opinion.
