Author of Sheila Says We're Weird and Defenders of Dirt. Promoting creativity, craft, cooperatives, and communities of care. I believe ideas can inform and inspire positive actions.
I am a little over halfway through Heather Cox Richardson's provocatively titled 2020 book, How the South Won the Civil War. The subtitle sums up her view of the ongoing aftermath: Oligarchy, Democracy, and the Continuing Fight for the Soul of America. I was planning to finish the
This is one of those old expressions that has undergone a seeming reversal of it's original meaning. A garment made from "whole cloth" used to be considered of a higher quality; it was not patched together from remnants and smaller pieces. Evidently, deceptive sellers of clothing
D.C. Stephenson, Grand Dragon of the KKK in Indiana (aka Steve and The Old Man), was serving his twenty-year prison sentence when the lawyer who convicted him "asked him if he'd been serious about running for the White House. Steve said the plan was real.
This is my seventeenth post here, and I'm officially declaring it the end of the first semester of this 4-year Learn, Imagine, Act project. During my years as a college professor, I felt a lot of institutional pressure to require final exams. But finals never struck me
It's nearly impossible to keep up. Last week, right after I pushed the "publish" button on my article, "Poison Words: Language, Dehumanization, and Death," I heard about the president's anti-semitic reference to "bad bankers" as "Shylocks." And,
Yes, this is another post related to eugenics. So many current issues involving the mistreatment of immigrants, people of color, women, and LGBTQIA people are laced with ideas that have carried over from this conceptual base. Victor Klemperer’s quote grew out of his experience of being a Jew in
The aim of this history is not to indict any particular figure, nor is it to undermine the positive discussion of neurodiversity that Asperger's work has inspired. Rather, it is cautionary tale in service of neurodiversity—revealing the extent to which diagnoses can be shaped by social and
"The moment an individual’s fundamental rights are subjected to a simple cost-benefit analysis is the moment the gates of hell open wide." Stephen Unwin, "Life Unworthy of Life: The Lessons of T4" I keep adding to my Learn, Imagine, Act resource list. Current events
"I know what concentration camps are. I was inside two of them, in America. And yes, we are operating such camps again." George Takei, 2019 Yesterday, I took advantage of some rare seasonal weather, driving through the countryside to relax in a small village. The town is blessed
"The past is never dead. In fact, it isn't even past." William Faulkner, Requiem for a Nun This is post #12 in my Finding Throughlines project, and it seems like a good time to reiterate what I'm up to here with my Learn, Imagine,
"While President Donald J. Trump might well have his own reasons for hating a university famous for its brain power, the anti-intellectual impulse behind Trump’s attacks on higher education has a long history in the United States." https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/may-24-2025 My
"People in different countries, at different times and in different ways, have used needlework to speak when their voices have been silenced, to speak for those they have lost through political upheaval. Women, especially those who are illiterate or living in poverty, have used sewing because it is the