“Be like Flannery,” the late, great Barry Hannah said to our creative writing class at the University of Mississippi, looking at me.  It was the fall of 1995.  I was twenty-one, there as a visiting student to write with him, drink and smoke at City Grocery, moon around the aisles of Square Books, and hang […]

The last – how many weeks? Three? – have been a blur of activity in Cheapskate-Intellectual-land. Two East Coast conference presentations in two successive weeks (Chapel Hill and Yale), revisions for a forthcoming essay, writing a book review for Keats-Shelley Journal, getting caught up in important curriculum-planning for next year, end of semester advising, Skype […]

Every morning, as I leave my house in an April that is already pretty busy — a gathering whirl of anger over new threats to academic freedom, two conferences in two weeks (the East Coast Tour – Chapel Hill, New Haven, and home), student stories to be graded, et cetera — my glance falls into […]

Folksinger Woody Guthrie played a guitar labeled, stirringly, “This Machine Kills Fascists.” And this machine — rented from the locally owned hardware store down the street — can chop up some fierce foes as well…. This machine kills the vague ennui of too much solitude.  It kills the self-disgust of totting up accounts and realizing […]

Much as I dislike the of-necessity neologism “staycation,” that’s what I’m doing while my college is on spring break this week – enjoying the days that immediately fill with things to do even if classes aren’t in session (hence my students’ question, “do you even get a break?” Weeellll….) But staying at home doesn’t mean […]

“The Clothes Pin” by Jane Kenyon How much better it is to carry wood to the fire than to moan about your life. How much better to throw the garbage onto the compost, or to pin the clean sheet on the line with a gray-brown wooden clothes pin! This afternoon – basking in the balmy-for-northeast-Iowa […]

OK, maybe not a total solution (that would be ceasing the manufacture of red plastic nets.) But it will keep them out of the landfill. And the ocean. Let it become a reusable produce bag! That way you won’t have to rip one of those little thin plastic bags off the roll in the store. […]

Lately I’ve been feeling challenged to keep mindful about spending.  Three things have helped: One, I consulted my credit-counseling service’s client website, where my progress chart looks like this: What a great feeling.  That’s just a little more than $1,500 on one card to go, compared to what was $22,000 on seven cards four years […]

“Let the Captains of Industry retire into their own hearts, and ask solemnly, If there is nothing but vulturous hunger for fine wines, valet reputation and gilt carriages, discoverable there? Of hearts made by the Almighty God I will not believe such a thing. . . . Arise, save thyself, be one of those that […]

Last month, my friend Kristin and I went cross-country skiing.  We trekked up to a wooded park on the side of a bluff – a beautiful place, with a snowy trail crossed by deer tracks and the skittery trails of mice, lit by the gray-and-pink light of a winter afternoon.  Winding in and out of […]