Category Archives: culture

Facebook: What’s the word for this?

Posted on April 13, 2018 by cheapskateintellectual

“Is Facebook a monopoly?” is and is not the right question to ask. Here’s why. Watching a batter-up rotation of senators take turns at questioning Mark Zuckerberg this week, and listening to the public response to the unfolding spectacle, shows … Continue reading →

Posted in corporations, culture, politics, technology | 2 Comments

Education and reality.

Posted on March 11, 2018 by cheapskateintellectual

This weekend I read Tara Westover’s new memoir Educated in one sitting. The story it tells is compelling: raised in a survivalist, fundamentalist-Mormon family in Idaho, Westover first attends school at age seventeen (her first day at Brigham Young University) … Continue reading →

Posted in culture, higher education, politics, self-reliance, teaching, the past, women | 4 Comments

The arts, for real.

Posted on March 28, 2017 by cheapskateintellectual

So. They want to cut the arts. Just something else for the talking heads to get worked up about. Just another aspect of someone else’s lifestyle luxuries you’re being expected to support. Except it’s not. You’re driving home at the … Continue reading →

Posted in art, culture, spirit | 1 Comment

Moving the house.

Posted on November 12, 2016 by cheapskateintellectual

On the morning of November 9, 2016, I walked out of my front door into a world I wasn’t sure I’d recognize.  It was the warmest November ever, but with just enough nip to the air to remind us it … Continue reading →

Posted in community, conservation, culture, frac-sand mining, home, politics, resilience, technology | 2 Comments

The idiot box.

Posted on February 27, 2016 by cheapskateintellectual

All sin starts from the assumption that my false self, the self that exists only in my own egocentric desires, is the fundamental reality of life to which everything else in the universe is ordered… And I wind experiences around … Continue reading →

Posted in community, culture, politics | 3 Comments

Dandelion wars.

Posted on May 21, 2014 by cheapskateintellectual

It’s that time again: the latest round of the anti-weed, lawn-spraying wars.  In our town, this plays out not only in individual lawns but on the campus of our college, which routinely comes under fire from lots in the community … Continue reading →

Posted in community, conservation, corporations, culture, gardening, teaching | Leave a comment

The triggering town: some thoughts on pedagogy, warnings, and experience.

Posted on May 18, 2014 by cheapskateintellectual

Sitting in my backyard on the first warm day of the year, I’m reading my first-year college students’ last papers: personal reflections on Plato’s “The Allegory of the Cave” and its application to education as they want to continue to … Continue reading →

Posted in culture, teaching | 10 Comments

“Learn, little cousin:” Seeing with Signorelli.

Posted on December 14, 2013 by cheapskateintellectual

Something about Christmas mixes emotion and memory like no other time.  This is the hinge of the year, the liminal space where we could step one way or another way, where we can and can’t see what’s coming.  Where we … Continue reading →

Posted in art, body, culture, mystery, spirit, the past | Leave a comment

Touching through the glass: animals, people, reality.

Posted on May 6, 2012 by cheapskateintellectual

Young parents laugh nervously as they film their child, whom they have placed up against the glass of a lioness’s cage in a zoo.  Behind the glass, the lioness is deadly serious:  she scratches and bites the barrier separating her … Continue reading →

Posted in animals, attention, culture, politics, self-reliance, technology, writing | 2 Comments

Afoot in the world.

Posted on April 22, 2012 by cheapskateintellectual

Back on the bike for a big day of riding today, the first in too long a time, under a sky so blue it hurt to look at it.  This was the kind of sunny, windy April day that has … Continue reading →

Posted in attention, biking, body, community, culture, Driftless region, politics, self-reliance | 1 Comment