Eliza Daley ~ Wordcraft & Musing on Home & Hope
There is a long and perhaps self-evident entanglement between unlimited property rights and violence. Violence is, of course, necessary to the right to destroy or kill, and private property — full ownership — will brook not even these extreme limits. In fact, to exercise and maintain unlimited property rights is to systematically employ death and… Continue reading The Violence of Property
The Sentence Louise Erdrich Harper, 2021 Louise Erdrich’s latest novel is a work of nested stories and messages, a compound sentence with braided subordinate clauses and ellipses and declamations in em dashes. It can be read as a love letter to the book world — and, indeed, it is hard to close the book and… Continue reading The Sentence: Review
Today, Ash Wednesday, is the beginning of the spring fast, Lent. The name lent derives from an Old English word meaning “spring season”. Other languages name this 40-day period before Easter with words that derive from “fasting”. We can see from these names that Lent is not merely a season of preparation for the Christian… Continue reading Lenten Fast for the Planet
Today is Town Meeting day in Vermont. For the uninitiated, this is the day when Vermonters pack themselves into school gyms and various meeting halls to vote on town governance for the upcoming year. Officials are elected. Laws are debated and passed. Budgets are assigned. If there are complaints or disturbances, these are given voice… Continue reading Participatory Democracy
About this time of year the maple trees around New England become festooned in bright tubing. It isn’t as romantic as the old-timey, hanging-bucket pictures on all the syrup bottles, but it’s much easier to maintain and keep clean. The trees are tapped (meaning a small hole is drilled down to the inner bark) and… Continue reading Sugar Season!
eleven degrees and snowing furiously the world is monochrome and hushed yet through the center there are guns and tears and red ruptures through winter airs there are last sighs and new strains of death and melting ice under bereft bears i try to hold it all but it slides through preoccupied fingers tea takes… Continue reading 25 february 2022
In response to "Conservative, Not Racist", I received a wonderful email from Kent Craig of Queensland, Australia, describing his continuing deep dives into received "wisdom" and what he's brought up to the surface in that process. He kindly gave me permission to share. I think it clearly shows that one doesn't have to have a… Continue reading A Happy Correspondence
I’ve been working on my notions of private property for weeks now. Actually, one might say that I’ve been trying to determine my relationship to the concept of owning property for much of my life, though the recent activity was inspired by ideas on property ownership presented in The Dawn of Everything. But this idea… Continue reading Tragedy of the Uncommons (Part 1)
Termination Shock Neal Stephenson William Morrow, 2021 I’m not going to give any opinions on this latest offering from Neal Stephenson. I’m actually reluctant to say anything at all about Termination Shock, as a book. But I am going to put up one spoiler. If you are looking for an exploration of the ideas and… Continue reading Termination Shock: Not a Review
My neighbor is a writer. He does about one column a fortnight for a local paper and has written at least one novel. He said something in a recent article that has been rattling about in my head for weeks. He observed that he is a conservative, white, old man and yet not a racist.… Continue reading Conservative, Not Racist
