As a reader and writer, talker and walker I “do” mostly with my mind with a little work for those reliably real metas, carpal and tarsal. Those actions largely comprise the me that comes to this space and pecks at keys; the me that makes pancakes for kids in the a.m.; the me that squats to scoop dog poop; the me that sings out snatches…
Upon Examination: The Many and Few Against Liberty
Widespread ignorance bordering on idiocy is our new national goal. It’s no use pretending otherwise and telling us, as Thomas Friedman did in the Times a few days ago, that educated people are the nation’s most valuable resources. Sure, they are, but do we still want them? It doesn’t look to me as if we do. The ideal citizen of a politically corrupt state, such…
Henry, A Portrait of Disinterest
But far more dangerous are these, who began when you were children, and took possession of your minds with their falsehoods, telling of one Socrates, a wise man, who speculated about the heaven above, and searched into the earth beneath, and made the worse appear the better cause. These are the accusers whom I dread; for they are the circulators of this rumor, and their…
Walking and Talking: Wilco’s One Sunday Morning
Yesterday, Wednesday morning, I walked the dogs, as usual, uphill on 1st street (east) around 8 a.m. It seemed a perfect morning. A chill air balanced by a warming sun; a blue sky with long intermittent clouds; no traffic (spring break in a college town). I thought, Here is a possible eternity. Here is a moment for which to cry out against dying. Here is…
Send Lee Hamilton To Jail!
Or, Let the People’s Representative of the Cage Represent Them From the Cage. Here is a fact: Lee Hamilton of Bloomington, Indiana, former member of Congress for 34 years, former head of the Woodrow Wilson Center, former chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, currently Director of the Center on Congress at Indiana University, has provided material support to a terrorist organization. This is apparently…
Common Core State Standards: A Stuccoed Stratum of Obscurity
What follows are two pieces by Eric Sargent, an educator in the St. Louis area, and good friend to the Errant. Eric has written the below in response to the state of education but also in response to our recent interest in Robert Frost. If I may be so bold, I will offer as preface, in an attempt to stitch the two pieces into a…
The Epic of The Once-ler
In an age of too much, too fast, too late we have already shoved the Seussian idea of ecology into the recycle bin of useless messages. I would rage against this idiotic cotton candy confection–but to what purpose? I participated in the very cultural act it’s supposed moral speaks against as I went to the theater and ate corn syrup and popped corn. (We did…
Corporate Foxes in the IN DOE Henhouse: The Chain School Gospel of Jeb Bush, Jon Hage and WalMart
When the Indiana Charter School Board recently approved two new Charter Schools USA schools to open in Indianapolis, the corporate school honeymoon was on. The East Indianapolis Charter Academy and the South Indianapolis Charter Academy, Charter Schools USA claimed, would be “feeder schools” for students to eventually enter the three other Indiana public schools the Florida for-profit company will be handed $2 million yearly to…
The Mind Arrested and Raised Above Desire
Stephen Dedalus on “esthetic stasis” as the “proper, esthetic emotion.” —Aristotle has not defined pity and terror. I have. I say— Lynch halted and said bluntly: —Stop! I won’t listen! I am sick. I was out last night on a yellow drunk with Horan and Goggins. Stephen went on: —Pity is the feeling which arrests the mind in the presence of whatsoever is grave…
I Sat Me Against A Tree
Robert Frost is likely well-known as one of our major poets and I would imagine that many grandparents recall a few of his poems. Many of you may even know several titles. But I’d hazard a guess that of the corpus most of us (we the people) probably know two poems if any: “Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening” and “The Road Not Taken.”…