Category: Culture
-
I’m listening
Ever wonder what some of our political representatives really think? Here’s Oklahoma representative Sally Kern, revealing her true beliefs about something she obviously knows nothing about. And, Sally, indoctrination has always been a part of public education. You’re just upset that some schools aren’t teaching your beliefs about the world any longer. And as for…
-
Who we think we are
An interesting analysis of the racial divide in America at the NYT, and how what we’ve been taught to think about homogeneous rural people and people from diverse urban centers doesn’t turn out to be true, at least when it comes down to who they’re voting for: The assumption has always been that a black…
-
Modern Ruins
One of my favorite sites on the internet these days is Shaun O’Boyle’s Modern Ruins. Full of photographic essays about places whose industries, way of life, or some other historical aspect, has fallen into ruin, it’s a beautiful way to preserve a particular swath of our cultural memory. My favorite is the Big Steel collection,…
-
The Gift
Ever read Lewis Hyde’s famous book The Gift? It’s in its twenty-fifth anniversary edition this year, and it’s still relevant to artists living and working in what continues to be our increasingly commercial market culture. Hyde is a proponent for a creative commonwealth, of sharing and giving as an essential part of creation. His ideas…
-
Caught in the middle
Listen up, Midwesterners. This is all about your future.
-
More on Americans and reading
Okay, one more entry before I head out for the weekend. This one is a review by Laura Miller on a book called The Age of American Unreason, by Susan Jacoby. It seems to be related to the ideas Ursula Le Guin addresses in her essay “Staying Awake” in the most current issue of Harpers. …
-
Are you up to it?
If you haven’t read it, go out now and purchase the new issue of Harpers magazine. Ursula K. Le Guin has the most perspicacious (not to mention a bit angry) essay on the state of reading, and the book, and the social bonding capacity of books, and their capacity to house cultural information and memory,…
-
Highbrow/Lowbrow
If you haven’t read the article by Charles McGrath in the Times about highbrow/lowbrow distinctions in literature in the wake of the author in England who won a settlement in court by claiming that fumes from a shoe factory near her house caused her to write a thriller, which she claimed was a fall from…
-
Totally excellent
I came across this video via the blog “I Will Shout Youngstown” this afternoon, and thought it was really representative of the spirit that’s been taking over Youngstown in the past couple of years, and that community spirit seems to be growing more and more over time now. To be completely honest, it feels strange…
-
The Stage, Halloween Style
Come to it and get up there!