Editors Note: There is too much to say. And it’s all already been said, written, sung, screamed. Beginning on September 11 and continuing through September 20 the Herald-Times has printed 19 items that reference the death of a local youth sent soldiering. Two of these are obituaries, the first incomplete due to lack of funeral arrangements, and one is an entry in “death notices”. But…
A Machete to the Kudzu: Against Promoting Greed
A back and forth with my friend Dimitri in the comments section of the post on raising our children as if technology was “part of nature, part of us” broached the subject of the shifting moral framework of our “cultural moment”. I know this is not an easy question and perhaps the hardest philosophical issue after “why are we here?”, but I don’t think the…
Intellectual and Emotional Kudzu: Indiana Policy Review’s Propaganda
Today, the HT offered up 646 words of rank propaganda from the far right of the political, economic and social spectrum. Who gets 646 words in the HT? Guest columns? Nope, a 500 word limit. Letters? Nope, 200 word limit. Those offering “commentary” may exceed those limits. I have asked for clarification from the Editorial Board. Today, like many other days, the HT promoted the…
You Are a Very Useful Engine: Bringing up a Technologist
As some who read the Errant might know, especially if they were readers of Nemesis, I use Emerson as a touchstone frequently as well as often referencing the passage below which begins the essay “Experience”. Where do we find ourselves? In a series of which we do not know the extremes, and believe that it has none. We wake and find ourselves on a stair;…
Warren Buffett and Corporate School Reformers to Gentrify / Charterize Indianapolis and Other Cities
The following is part of a longer essay Doug Martin is currently working on considering the Mind Trust, a corporate school reform outfit in Indianapolis. As Atlanta Progressive Review’s Matthew Cardinale recently noted, Purpose Built Communities (PBC), a neighborhood turnaround group started in 2009 by Warren Buffett, hedge fund manager Julian Robertson, and Atlanta businessman Tom Cousins, have hired former Atlanta mayor Shirley Franklin to team up…
True Education: Huck’s River, Against the Banks
I’ve been chatting with my friend Eric, who is a teacher, about Huckleberry Finn and we were discussing the difficulty of actually reading this greatest and most seminal of American novels (as Hemingway opined, though I would still offer Moby Dick is better) in class due to the fact that the word “nigger” is comfortable, naturally for the time, in the mouth of it’s narrator….
Tony Bennett and the Dark Night of Reform Ideology
I’ll confess that I have trouble focusing when it comes to the continuing and constant aggressive onslaught by “faceless” capital against human beings. I know that capital is not faceless–it shines in the face of Indiana Superintendent of Public Instruction (a term of art if ever there was one) George Creel, er, I mean, Tony Bennett (that’s Doctor TB to you). That face beamed out…
Local Errant: Re-Habitat for Humanity Or Leave Those Trees Alone
(Update below) Gertrude Stein said, “a rose is a rose is a rose” (a rose arose?)…she also said “Birds measure birds measure stores birds measure stores measure birds measure,” and “Weeds without papers are necessary.” Go figure. I spent some time thinking about how “green” planning and development is, by any other name, still just a construction project. And if it’s targeted location is existing…
Tyranny at Home, Death Abroad: The Real Legacy of 9/11
What’s hard about yesterday, about honoring tragic events, is that it must necessarily be conducted only on a symbolic level. These are memorials. As such they are at best expressions of real, local grief and mourning; at worst they are manipulative of a secondary response be it fear, sorrow, or anger in which these are channeled to serve a vulgar valorizing purpose. This becomes the…
Reflections on September 11, 2001: On Experience
A preface of sorts first: Emerson, from the opening of his essay “Experience”. Where do we find ourselves? In a series of which we do not know the extremes, and believe that it has none. We wake and find ourselves on a stair; there are stairs below us, which we seem to have ascended; there are stairs above us, many a one, which go upward…