And What a View It Is!
A look at Lewis Raven Wallace’s The View from Somewhere: Undoing the Myth of Journalistic Objectivity. The movement away from journalistic reliance on “objectivity” (I use the quotes for a reason—you will see… Continue reading
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Presence: Hope and 21st Century American Academia
I’ve collected quite a number of my blog posts on higher education into a single volume. It can be purchased through Amazon.com either as a paperback or for Kindle. Get if from CUNY… Continue reading
The Monster and the Comics: Frankenstein, Mel Brooks, Gene Wilder and America Popular Culture
In 1939, when Mel Brooks was twelve or thirteen in Brooklyn and Gene Wilder was six or seven out in Milwaukee, they probably saw John Ford’s Young Mr. Lincoln starring Henry Fonda. They… Continue reading
The Learning Curve… Flatlines?
The photograph I chose to accompany this post makes my blood boil. It’s a decade older than I am, yet I can see today that the antisemitism spawning the horror shown has not… Continue reading
"Of ourselves and of our origins": Hemingway and Williams in Key West
One of the my favorite poems was inspired by Key West, Florida. It is Wallace Stevens’ “The Idea of Order at Key West.” It starts: She sang beyond the genius of the sea. The… Continue reading
Angkor Before the Khmer Rouge: A Snapshot Essay
Christmas of 1965, while Americans back home were beginning to learn where Saigon was, the Barlow family was preparing to leave Bangkok for a few days in Cambodia, the country separating Thailand from… Continue reading
Savanna, Sahel, Sahara: Then What?
On market days in the late 1980s, women carried bundles of wood alongside the national road, the one paved road in much of northern Togo. They might be going to the village of… Continue reading
Signs of Things to Come?
As goes Kentucky, goes the nation. Could be. And that might not be so good. Already, defeated incumbent Governor Matt Bevin is claiming voter fraud and demanding a recanvass though the 5,000-vote margin… Continue reading
Blowhards and News Clowns: Can They Learn to Win?
In a post on August 4, 2016, I posited Donald Trump as Indiana Jones faced with a scimitar-twirling attacker (his Republican primary opponents). He, of course, pulls out a pistol and shoots the… Continue reading
Slavery’s Heritage in Public
A few years ago, when visiting Middleton Place, an old plantation near Charleston, SC that is now a tourist attraction, I noted that there was more emphasis on the role of the slaves… Continue reading