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Ezra Klein, Sheila Liming, Loneliness, and Winnie-the-Pooh
To a man with a book, the whole world is about Winnie-the-Pooh. In this rerun of Ezra Klein’s 2023 podcast about what he calls the “The Quiet Catastrophe,” Klein talks about the loneliness “epidemic” with Sheila Liming, and about her book "Hanging Out: The Radical Power of Killing Time," and it just naturally dovetailed with “The House at Pooh Corner.” To be honest, what Klein and Liming consider a catastrophe I consider my happy place, but your mileage may vary. Continue reading →
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On Reading "The House at Pooh Corner"
A few days before Thanksgiving, I finished reading The House at Pooh Corner for the first time. I don’t remember being read to very much as a child, which may simply be a gap in my memory. My mother, who left school in 10th grade, wasn’t a big reader, so that makes sense; my father took us to the bookmobile that came to our neighborhood Monday evenings, and he’d read mostly biographies and sports books, and I inherited a few books that he owned as a child, but I just don’t remember him reading to me. Continue reading →
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Talkin' 'Bout a Revolution: Cooking at Home
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I Changed Lila Shroff's ChatGPT Query to
I suggested that @ayjay do the same thing the Atlantic writer, Lila Shroff, did, but for Jesus. But Alan decided, instead, to ask various AI chatbots a meta-question: “It often happens that chatbots parrot Nazi talking-points, or say “Hail Satan,” or cheerfully teach people how to make sacrifices to Moloch — but you never hear about chatbots telling people that Jesus Christ is their Lord and Savior, or that there is no god but Allah and Mohammed is his prophet. Continue reading →
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The Age of Futility and the Age of Sensibility
Tom at @apoorplayer wrote a powerfully honest essay called “The Age of Futility” that inspired me to do what we used to do in the old days of blogging: write a post on our own blog, and then link to the original, creating an actual conversation. Here’s my contribution: “The Age of Sensibility.” Continue reading →
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Life Energy
“We exchange something very precious for money: our life energy. Do we want to spend our time and energy earning money and contributing to the market economy, or fostering creative pursuits, our relationships, and community, and contributing love?” Twelve by Twelve: A One-Room Cabin Off the Grid and Beyond the American Dream by William Powers Continue reading →
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My Position on AI
There continues to be a lot of “discussion” concerning AI. I have not taken a stand on this blog, preferring to follow around @apoorplayer and make counter-arguments, which is just sort of trollish. So let me write here and give him a chance to follow me around for once. Let me start with a personal story. On St Patrick’s Day 1978, my mother, who had just turned 42, died of liver cancer. Continue reading →
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The Lack of Inspiration in US Politics
I have had it with US politics. It’s not because–or not ONLY because–the Trump Administration’s policies (I use the term extremely loosely) are uninformed, haphazard, and abusive, it’s because the entire process has become superficial and narrow. And while the Republicans seem to have cornered the market on superficial, narrow stupidity, the Democrats aren’t that far behind them. The political system has been entirely taken over by marketing people. Political discourse is like one 30-second commercial after another, no vision, no depth, just slogans. Continue reading →
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Ivan Illich, John McKnight, and Asset-Based Communities
(This post is the result of writing I’ve been doing on my personal project.] I’ve been reading Ivan Illich’s 1970 classic Deschooling Society and John McKnight’s The Careless Society. I’ve admired the ideas of these two people over the years, but it wasn’t until recently that I discovered that they actually knew each other and that McKnight was greatly influenced by the time he spent with Illich. Reading the two books side by side (not literally! Continue reading →
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A Personal Project
I began a new project a few days ago. In many ways, it is the opposite of the Learn in Public orientation. In fact, it is intentionally Learn in Private. I have been writing (and learning, and sharing) in public for 20 years, and it has been great. I’ve learned a lot, and I flatter myself in thinking that my writing made at least a little difference to those who were trying to re-imagine theater. Continue reading →
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The River of Vision
I wrote this in 2008, and it still is true today: From Daniel Quinn’s deceptively simple and inspiring Beyond Civilization: Humanity’s Next Great Adventure: The river I mentioned earlier is the river of vision. Our culture’s river of vision is carrying us toward catastrophe. Sticks planted in the mud may impede the flow of the river, but we don’t need to impede its flow, we need to divert it into an entirely new channel. Continue reading →
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When i largely disconnected from social media, I remembered what it was like to have only my own thoughts to entertain myself. It was the main reason I started reading so much – to make me more interesting to myself!
