Nine o’clock after my evening writing class in the community arts center and I’m coasting on my bike through the river bottoms, on my way home. Not a sound but tire-slurp in mud, animals, birds. Mist rises from the water. A rustle in the grass becomes a garter snake, a long stripe with a darker […]
Read moreMOOCs in Citizenville.
What happens when you use technology to “serve people” by taking people and their physical presence in particular places – and thus their sense of responsibility and relationship to one another and to that place – out of the picture entirely? One result is MOOCs, or “Massively Open Online Courses,” packages of videotaped lectures and […]
Read moreAfter the election, the way forward.
Today a friend of mine, an African-American woman and PhD candidate, writes: “I tested a subject today whose very existence is the opposite of mine. He is an older (near octogenarian), White Republican, and I am…not. But during the session, we spoke respectfully of our political differences. Though there were the inevitable moments of awkward […]
Read moreBittersweet.
You pull up to the little grocery store in a distinguished area of a small west-Georgia river city, near the country club and a ladies dress shop named after a Confederate novel. There are beautiful old homes here, and old white people of the genteel and eccentric kind that live on mostly in Southern caricature […]
Read moreCommon ground: politics, water, and life.
Checking my email on what is going to be my last full morning in Alabama for a while, I found some very troubling news: fracking may be coming to our beautiful little corner of northeast Iowa. You might say it’s technically not fracking, since the proposed mine in Allamakee County would be for what’s called […]
Read moreMoving home: (re)thinking the organic South.
Sometimes I think “home” in my mobile life has become less a specific place than a kind of place where certain conditions obtain — the sense of comfort, practicality, and freedom that comes from being able to move around on foot and bike as well as car; the ability to eat healthy food that didn’t […]
Read moreSomebody made this: who?
This morning, I took my first-ever pottery class, in the spacious studio in our college’s arts center, with a generous colleague, George, and a large group of students, several of whom had been in my classes before. I’m here on sabbatical, I said, to learn, just like you are. And the relief of being among […]
Read moreFriendship, community, and sensory delight: now on sale.
Just back from an excursion to our local farmers market – amazing that because of travel and what-have-you, this was my first visit to the market this summer. As ever, I had a wonderful time greeting and talking with friends, exchanging local news (when will they replace the bridge on Happy Hollow Road? hope it’s […]
Read moreGiving back to the garden.
It’s been a tough week in our little town, with reminders of how quickly life can change, and how strong the fabric of friendship and love in a community can be, and how precious the threads are that connect us. More than ever it feels necessary to at least try to ask, before proceeding with […]
Read moreGardening in public.
Our little town’s gardening group has been buzzing after two of our members — following a neighbor’s anonymous complaint — were notified recently that they might be in violation of a city ordinance against gardening in the “boulevard,” the strip of grass between sidewalk and curb in front of most houses. The issue: our members’ […]
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