In the mid-1980’s, I found myself on a journey that I had not anticipated. In one way I had started the journey in my late teens when I recall quite consciously deciding I was going to be a Renaissance Man, someone who could live by his wits and be good at many different things. I…
Chip Berlet and Frederick Clarkson have argued that “It would be nice if conservative White evangelicals called off the Culture Wars that they started and continue to aggressively pursue. It would be even nicer if liberal (and even some progressive) pundits stopped prematurely announcing the end of the Culture Wars and the demise of the…
When I was a boy learning about life and community in a poor area of Milwaukee, I saw and experienced eating dirt. Although I don’t recall if there were specific ages when we were inducted into the practice or were no longer eligible for it, I do remember what it looked like. The boy expected…
Fictions are remembered, too, and they are not stored any differently in the mind from other experiences. They are experience. Siri Hustvedt, Living, Thinking, Looking: Essays For many years I have wondered how poor and working class people in the U.S. can be so regularly persuaded to vote against their own self-interests. Election after election we…
Memory, like perception, is not passive retrieval but an active and creative process that involves the imagination. We are all always reinventing our pasts, but we are not doing it on purpose. Delusion, however great, is not the same as mendacity. We know when we are lying . Lying is a form of double consciousness.…
Thirty-one years, 11 months, and two weeks ago, Paul and I met for the first time. In the ensuing years I have said countless times, “I never had a chance.” Several weeks ago I downloaded a count-down app to my phone. Every few days I change the music it plays while a counter shows how…
There have been big swaths of my life when I felt like I was leading from behind. I suspect that many, many others have felt the same way, though they might not have named the phenomenon thus. Here are some examples: Having more experience and information than anyone else in a group, but not being…
Only a couple of weeks ago, I remarked how a few fireflies in my backyard made me a time traveler. Dexter and I both spotted their greenish glow. You know how they are: the first one or two make you wonder for a moment if you actually saw them. You look where the tiny beam…
The Fourth of July is a nostalgic time for me. I remember with pleasure and wonder blankets under the sky at Jackson, Mitchell, Wilson, and Juneau Parks. I recall parades and curbs and decorated bikes. While there were traditions like soupy Jell-o and potato salad that needed monitoring for temperature, there were also steady changes…
Over the next several weeks, I will be very active in transitioning leadership of the organization I founded to its new executive. There will be scores of details to address, skeletons to exhume, and introductions to make. Today, I am hitting the pause button on my regular blog posts. This current post is the 100th…
Creating Community for Everyone 