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zooming through the pandemic
More specifically, I occasionally Zoom while teaching classes, although my spring semester ended a couple of weeks ago. I'm scheduled for one this summer, beginning June 30. That's how I'll teach in the fall, but my work will be sparse. For the first time in what's likely twenty-five years, there are more full-time faculty scheduled for classes ( Read more... ) -
Brothers Notorious
Last night, I finished reading Brothers Notorious: The Sheltons - Southern Illinois' Legendary Gangsters about three brothers who became notorious during the Prohibition era for bootlegging, violent battles with rival gangs from St. Louis and Chicago, and their dichotomous good old boy/vicious gangster lifestyles. When I was a kid, my dad and ( Read more... ) -
hate the poison ivy, but don't want to hurt the bees
So, after thinking I was perhaps immune to the perils of poison ivy after pulling countless yards of vines off my house and garage, cutting down stray saplings, and pruning shrubs, I came down with a stubborn rash a couple of weeks ago that I'm just now beginning to kick with the help of Prednisone. I was telling my sister about it, and she told me ( Read more... ) -
dogwood gone wild
I should have taken pictures, and still might do so but not tonight ( Read more... ) -
Bernie
I'm all for Bernie Sanders.
I'd be saying much more about it here if Live Journal was like Live Journal was in 2008, when I was all for Obama and talked about it on here a few times every day.
So, go Bernie! -
let me wax your nostalgia
Ah, for the sweet, horrible half-mornings when you could count on opening Live Journal and find a thousand posts from those who cowered in unshaven rooms in underwear, burning their money in wastebaskets and listening to the Terror through the wall . . . " -
Oliver Sacks, on the stars in the sky
A few weeks ago, in the country, far from the lights of the city, I saw the entire sky “powdered with stars” (in Milton’s words); such a sky, I imagined, could be seen only on high, dry plateaus like that of Atacama in Chile (where some of the world’s most powerful telescopes are). It was this celestial splendor that suddenly made me realize how ( Read more... ) -
(Untitled)
I like what Janeane Garofalo has to say about current politics in this interview from Time:
I can’t speak for everybody, but I find some of these things just tragic and painful to absorb and not helpful to us as a society. Those that are ignorant, racist, misogynistic, homophobic-it empowers them when they have figureheads to rally around, when ( Read more... )
