The future is incompatible with human thinking. That’s not to say we cannot imagine “tomorrow” but that what we imagine will always be cobbled together out of “pastness.” Further, the very same thinking that is…
Browsing Category America
The Spirit of America: The 13th Amendment
I must admit to an utter ignorance of the depths of duplicity written into the United States legal codes. I might have once thought myself an astute cynic of the “law” as I have long…
Our Surround: A Final Word
A final word here. Power proceeds to find force unnecessary and counterproductive. This turns out to be the end of that great experiment called America; the democratic ideal its philosophy; industrial consumption its means. Power…
Law On Her Brow
One would guess that “The Portent” is far and away Herman Melville’s most well-known poem (perhaps the only poem of his remembered or read by anyone other than an academic). It opens his book Battle-Pieces…
…and ride Mankind
What boots thy zeal, O glowing friend, That would indignant rend The northland from the south? Wherefore? To what good end? Boston Bay and Bunker Hill Would serve things still: Things are of the snake….
A Manual on Suppression of Dissent
Does it never occur to so many folks that monotheism–belief in an authoritarian ruler (male, though I don’t suppose Gee Oh Dee needs genitalia)–is the locus of totalitarianism? Furthermore, Judaism–as Christianity and Islam would later…
from Nature by Emerson
An audio recording by Doug Storm from Emerson’s Nature. (10:52) Introduction: Our age is retrospective. It builds the sepulchres of the fathers. It writes biographies, histories, and criticism. The foregoing generations beheld God and nature face…
from “Self-Reliance” by Emerson
An audio recording by Doug Storm of the below selection from “Self-Reliance.” (13:24) from Essays: First Series (1841) Ralph Waldo Emerson “Ne te quaesiveris extra.” “Man is his own star; and the soul that can Render…
Letter III of Letters From an American Farmer
An audio recording by Doug Storm of a selection from Letters from an American Farmer by Michel-Guillaume Jean de Crèvecoeur. — from Letters from an Amercian Farmer–from Letter III. (duration approximately 11 minutes) What is an…
from The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin
An audio recording by Doug Storm of selections of The Autobiography by Benjamin Franklin. (duration approximately 18 minutes) from Leaving Boston from Arrival in Philadelphia from Arriving at Moral Perfection *** from Leaving Boston At…