The Cheapskate Intellectual

A journey through matters of spirit, sustainability, and self-reliance

The Women’s March: here, there, and everywhere.

Saturday, January 21, 2017 It felt good to be out on our little town’s main street with a sign in my hand again, surrounded by my friends and students and – despite the chilly fog – determination and hope. As I describe in my forthcoming book, The Hands-On Life: How to Wake Yourself Up and […]

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Little bitty Christmas trees.

A rerun from 2011 that’s been on my mind today. Merry Christmas, y’all. — “I’ve been a pastor for more than 15 years, and I am still amazed at folks in nursing homes, many unable to remember the majority of their own lives, who will begin to sing and nod and clap when they hear […]

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The idiot box.

All sin starts from the assumption that my false self, the self that exists only in my own egocentric desires, is the fundamental reality of life to which everything else in the universe is ordered… And I wind experiences around myself and cover myself with pleasures and glory like bandages in order to make myself […]

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Putting our hands on it.

Today in Internet horror: rare Argentine dolphin dies after being passed around by a selfie-taking crowd. Sticky and sandy and dry and eager, eager, seeking hands, all over that moist skin, sucking its moisture away in curiosity or excitement or wonder or unexamined narcissistic need, suspending it out of the sea until it heats and […]

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