Architecture, the Public Realm, and Small-Town America

Returning to North Judson typically leads to my resuming a favored pastime, to wit, engaging in crosstown perambulations that usually lead me to no destination other than, ultimately, home, the starting point of these jaunts. In such an eminently walkable small town where I know as many citizens as I do, these generally prove to [...]

Better than folding socks

Struggling to sleep tonight, I had afore me two options: I could match my socks — always a vexing ordeal (Where do those wandering socks go when they leave their partners cuckolded?) — or I could read further in Wendell Berry’s The Art of the Commonplace. Persevering, slowly as I do, in my quest to [...]

Barack Obama and American maturity

Anyone who’s read this web-log, heard me rant about Mr. Obama as the second reincarnation of FDR (perhaps third, if we include the outgoing Mr. Bush), or knows anything about me recognizes that I have no interest in defending or desire to support our almost-president. I laugh, sadly, at those who have partaken of the [...]

Steve Carell: Awesome

Steve Carell has purchased a general store.
He said the purchase was more of an “emotional investment than a business one” and an opportunity to preserve a piece of Americana.
For being part of the “televised America”, Mr. Carell seems to have a wonderful sense of the real America. Good for him!

Economic Piranha

Random post-shower thought this morning:
Bringing a Walmart to town to stimulate economic development is something like replacing two dead fish in a tank with two piranha. They’ll replace the now-defunct life in the environment and, be they one male and one female, may even add additional life. They’ll also eat the other fish who already [...]

“Soldier of Misfortune”

From Tuesday’s Post:
[Iraq] was a war with its own original sin: the Bush administration’s failure to provide enough troops. To make up the shortfall, the government chose to outsource responsibility for deciding who can kill and die for the United States to for-profit companies that employed tens of thousands of soldiers-for-hire: mercenaries, or private security [...]

Mighty Powerful: Professor Deneen on Black Friday

And, today, if we can identify the rampaging “consumers” who killed that poor, poor, undeserving man who sought to open the doors of Wal-Mart for minimum wage on Black Friday, we will exonerate ourselves from any stain that we may all bear in assenting to a culture in which hordes stampede for cheap flat screen [...]

The Catholic Capitulation: Blame the Leadership, Part I

A few weeks ago, I conversed online with a friend from Notre Dame, a devout, knowledgeable Catholic (undeniably better than I), who is married and the young mother of two adorable children, whom she and her husband intend to raise, and already raise, in the Faith and traditions of the Holy Mother Church, when she [...]

Black Friday!

Black Friday? Nay! Buy Nothing Day!
Rather than hoarding the hottest new d.v.d. player or Tickle-Me-Whoever, take a stand against rampant materialist consumerism, the idolization of stuff, and cultural meaningless. Just. Buy. Nothing. Spend time with your family. Read a book; read to your children, rather than buying inconsequential garbage for them. Attend Mass. Go for a [...]

Rahm Emanuel, briefly

Doubtless, others well versed in the intricacies of the Cook County/Chicago Machine can better elucidate just how indebted President-elect Obama is to the selfsame organization against which he purportedly fought in his days a community organizer. However, friend to Mr. Obama or not, Rahm Emanuel’s selection as chief of staff should remind us immediately of [...]