“If I had influence with the good fairy who is supposed to preside over the christening of all children I should ask that her gift to each child in the world be a sense of wonder so indestructible that it would last throughout life, as an unfailing antidote against the boredom and disenchantments of later […]
Read moreI believe that what rules us is less the material world of goods and services than the immaterial one of whims, assumptions, delusions, and lies; that only by studying this world can we hope to shape how it shapes us; that only by attempting to understand what used to be called, in a less embarrassed […]
Read moreThis afternoon was held the first-ever meeting of “Occupy Decorah,” organized through the Northeast Iowa Peace and Justice Center. We gathered with signs reading everything from POWER TO THE PEACEFUL to IN GOD WE TRUSTED, IN WALL STREET WE BUSTED to REINSTATE GLASS-STEAGALL to I DON’T WANT TO BUY THE KOCHS A WORLD to WE […]
Read moreThinking of new graphic design strategies. Messing around with the clothespin pictures I took in the last of the sun today, I realized: hey, I kind of like this. And what do you know, there’s even a font called Poor Richard. Thoughts?
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What Work Is For Hurry home through the warm bright afternoon with a load of students’ work to read, your laptop wheezing in your bag, to whirl white sheets into the cold machine and pin them to the line to catch the last two hours of sunlight in the last September of the year, and […]
Read moreMuch as I hate the reasons for having to do this, and despite its corporate appearance, on the advice of a good and savvy friend I’ve added the copyright sign to the CI masthead, as you can see. “That’s a great name,” she said, “and take it from me, I’ve had it happen — names […]
Read more“A garden, you know, is a very usual refuge of a disappointed politician.” — Alexander Hamilton, 1802 (qtd. in NY Times, 9/15/11) As a society, we’ve got a reality problem. A know-nothing right-wing anarchism designed to starve government to death while enriching the anarchists’ own careers is being accorded a respectability and freedom of movement […]
Read moreAn ironic, forlorn voice, a twist on Edna St. Vincent Millay’s, floats through my head suddenly tonight: Oh my foes, and oh my friends, oh, I am so afraid. Fear is not a characteristic note for me, in anything I say or write — and not only because I try to keep the darkest things […]
Read moreI can’t remember when this country has ever been so afraid, even more than it was in the days and months following 9/11. Except that what is clouding our hearts and our minds and our lives right now is not immediately recognizable as fear. Even as their average constituent swallows hard and keeps looking for […]
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