Who is the Political Genius Behind This Idea?
I had to read this twice in order to believe Bush would be so stupid. I’m grateful to Charlie Rangle for his clear, direct & apposit response, quoted in this bit from the Times:
The basic concept is that employer-provided health insurance, now treated as a fringe benefit exempt from taxation, would no longer be entirely [...]
What is Poetry?
That’s what I asked my Intro to Lit students on Wednesday. They had read the Norton Introduction to Literature’s exposition of the subject, but the five or six students who have replied so far haven’t taken much cognizance of what the Norton’s editors say. Instead, they seem to be channeling some kind of cultural knowledge.
Note: [...]
Big Snow
Sometimes things just work out. It’s been a tough couple of weeks in which the world has just seemed to jump up & bite me in various small ways. Last night when we were driving home in my car, Carole said, “What is that vibration, it’s making me seasick!” Well, I had been noticing a [...]
My (So-Called) On-Line Life
I’m not exactly sure how it has come about, but I seem to be participating it two on-line communities, one old school & one very cutting edge. The old school is the Poetryetc email list I’m now co-managing, the cutting edge is the NewsTrust journalism filter, where I have been posting pretty much daily. That’s [...]
Salmon Red Flannel Hash
I’m reduced to writing about what I cook for dinner because if I think about the profound & ongoing crisis in American society & politics, I just want to cry. For the moment, at least, I still like to eat. Red flannel hash is hash with beats in it. Last night I made salmon cakes: [...]
Basic Bread
I spent most of the day deciding not to use Blackboard for my Literature of American Popular Music course. I went to Edublogs instead & started a blog. But in betwen sessions at the computer, I made soup & baked bread. The soup was from a mid-week roasted chicken carcass, the bread my basic variety:
I [...]
Wouldn’t it Be Pretty
If we had a functioning democracy in the United States. I’ve mostly given up overt political commentary in this microscopic corner of the blog universe, but I think Digby gets it exactly right about the president’s “surge” & the political history that provides the context. Over the course of my lifetime, the right has proved [...]
Level of Discourse
It is a mystery to me how a well-written & thoughtful resource like Inside Higher Ed so consistently attracts trolls to its comment sections. It is as if ninety percent of the people who post comments bear a grudge against academia because they flunked out during their sophomore year. There is just something about colleges [...]
Michael Berube
I’m sorry to read that academic blogger Michael Bérubé is hanging up his blogging shoes. (Or would that be hanging up his blogging gloves?) I sometimes found his blog a little arch, but I haven’t found anyone else who so clearly & passionately lays out the sort of progressive politics I believe in. And since [...]
The Literature of American Popular Music
This is the book list for a new course I’m teaching this semester. One of the great things about being a professor is that I get to organize courses around things I am passionate about. Anyway, the list:
Train Whistle Guitar by Albert Murray.
Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, August Wilson.
RL’s Dream by Walter Mosley.
Deep Blues, Robert Palmer.
Vintage [...]
