the autonomy of memory

I dug a hole in the desert this afternoon, a grave for my Golden Retriever, out on the Arizona Strip. She's been with me a year, her deterioration mild and slow at first and then cruel and rapid this last week of her life. A foot of topsoil yielded shale thick and barely penetrable, and...

chasm

We’ve all seen the bumper sticker, especially in more conservative contexts, “...one nation, under God...” I saw a beautiful etching of this on the backlight of a car the other day. As I rode my motorcycle behind it, I ran through the Pledge in my mind and was struck by the irony of the movement...

a free press

So I was wrong. Embarrassingly so, and yet no one called me out on it. Not one student. In my New Social Media class today I pushed a topic on how mainstream media have been setting the agenda of the Occupy Wall Street movement, carefully choosing the talking heads with the least credibility, the most...

iTake to Oregon

dogma, noise and courage

"Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but...