Seated in Starbucks this morning, marveling at the blue sky outside my window. Sunlight streams into the room whenever someone opens the front door entering or departing. I have more leaves to rake from the grass, and I am thankful to have yet another opportunity before the frost comes. The frost will come hard…
We are on the cusp of the holidays. Thanksgiving comes first, then Christmas, and as an after thought, New Years. Thanksgiving is a harvest festival with a focus upon bonds between family and friends. Christmas is complicated. There’s the commercial dimension, which already has emerged a week before Thanksgiving, and there is the religious…
Starbucks is a hubbub of background voices, like the breaking of waves on a sandy lake shore. Interlaced with indistinct conversations is the voice of a smooth jazz singer in the background. All this serves as sonic context for some reading and writing. Do we not read and write for ourselves with others? What…
Theodor Adorno was no fan of pop culture. He thought it was a guilty pleasure. Hardly. Pleasure contaminated by guilt, a cold glass of milk on a hot summer day, with a gnat floating on the surface…. That’s the picture I get. Regret, a price is to be paid as life unfolds. Guilt is…
What is the robbing of a bank compared to the founding of a new bank? — Bertholdt Brecht What is the brutality of Trump’s racist and sexist outbursts compared to the brutality and violence of today’s global capitalism? — Slavoj Zizek
We join ourselves to the living world by the artifacts of art and science – by made things. We are always going to be at least somewhat at fault, because we are ignorant, fallible and small. The living world is larger and more complex than our works. — Wendell Berry I am an advocate…
I anticipate our discussion tonight on the role of popular culture, according to the work of Theodor Adorno. Adorno lived in the mid 20th century and was of the opinion that pop culture was exploitative, depriving it’s consumers of genuine aesthetic enjoyment. Even worse the externalized consequences, — a less than healthy, robust and…
This morning I was at an impasse. I had no definite inclination to write. That is rare. There is always something of import, either a local personal item of interest, something I care about or perhaps one of the political and social inanities of the Trump administration that begs for comment. I had no…
The sky is bright with morning. Soon I will leave Louisville. The reason for our presence here has been accomplished. We welcomed a new family member into the World. The World is much bigger than our family and we are part of it. There are many generations before us. We are their representatives, their…
It’s unseasonably cold this morning. The sky is gray, underbellies of clouds glow pink at the point where the sun is soon to rise. I am at a Holiday Inn in Louisville, Kentucky. I have more to say about the topic of freedom, as instinct says that I left the matter unfinished. The topic…
