For real, I want to know.

 

Here are some recent books I’ve been tackling.

 

Omnivore’s Dilemma: This is a fascinating book and the source of inspiration for my post about corn. In this book Michael Pollan follows four meals, from their roots to the table, and talks about all the political, spiritual, and environmental ramifications of eating. The four meals are Fast-Food, Organic, Local, and Hunter/Gathered. Michael is great writer with a clear and thoughtful syle.

 

The Undercover Economist: This is a popular level book on economics that is joy to read. Tim Harford touches on the basics as well as the complex with great deal of clarity and humor. If you read this, you’ll never look at the world the same way (especially a sale at the mall). The introductory chapters touching on marginal economics is worth the price of the book alone. He deals with the question, why does the coffeeshop on the corner next to the train stop sell so much coffee but makes so little money? It’s fascinating.

 

Community and the Politics of Place: In this book Daniel Kemmis dives into the relationship between the built environment and civics. What are the roots and ills of Rugged Individualism? Why can’t the democratic process as typically instigated bring about the common good in our system? What is the best way to learn civics? These are the questions discussed in this book. Although there is a good bit of political theory and philosophy in this book, it is more realistic than ideological.

 

I’ve added links to some of the blogs run by memebers of this blog. If you want me to add any more links, either to blogs or web sites, let me know.

Turns out that either this month or the next, I’ll be conducting interviews with both Sufjan Stevens and Garrison Keillor, given that I was drafted to be a writer for our school paper, and the features editor is a friend of mine. 

 Sufjan!  I will ask him about being Anglican catholic.  Anyone have any good ideas for questions for either of them?

I plan to ask Keillor about the future of radio and the reasons why he persists in a medium that has been on the way out for fifty years.  I love NPR as much as the next girl, but we’ll see what happens in ten more years. 

 

 

 

 I’m actually quite excited, even though I have no time for this, already having a full load and I just signed on to do all the set-dressing and props for our local Late Night show, ‘LATE’.  Life is good.

I just read a magazine article on multi-generational living. Of course, I was interested because we just moved Dave’s mom in to live with us. Her generation has always had funny ideas about “not being a burden to their children,” “living their own life,” and thinking that small children are too much of an annoyance for older people to tolerate.
I always wanted to be Amish. They seemed to have such a sense of community, which included a sense of family.
There are many benefits to having extended family close at hand. Most of those benefits are not realized until you begin to have children and realize that the help, counsel and comfort that can be relied upon by trustworthy family members is irreplaceable.
Its difficult to be Titus 2 woman if all your younger women live at opposite ends of the country. I don’t believe childbearing women lived as isolated of lives as American women do today. Our country’s families have probably always been more disconnected. We began as people on a pilgrimage from other countries, then came the Westward Expansion…
Anyway, my longterm goal is to live close to at least some of my grandchildren before they are in college and no longer like me. I want to be an influence in their lives. I would like to see them grow up the way I did, feeling connected to something larger than just mom, dad and sibs. I want them to have a sense of personal history and legacy. I want them to have an entire network of protection and help, memories and fun.

I thought I’d write a quick post about my future home. As you all know, I work for Whittaker Homes in St. Charles, MO. I took the job because of the progressive work in city design/building that they are doing in the greater St. Louis area. There is NOTHING quite like it in the entire state. The design philosophy is called “New Urbanism” and, basically, involves ripping off pre-1930’s urban design patterns and reapplying them to our modern construction and development methods.

The reasons for doing this are numerous. Look around sometime and notice how your favorite places are organized. Americans (and people in general) favor historic streets and cities far more than modern ones – at least that’s what our pocketbooks say. Tourists don’t go to suburbs to walk around. They go “downtown.” The problem with construction and development patterns since the 50’s has been that they lack these centers. There is no such thing as a “downtown” anymore in these developments. There are only shopping malls and fast food restaurants. [...]

Hey peeps, anyone interested in starting a commune? There’s free land in Kansas we can use. We could set up our own government, write our own laws, and farm our own crops.

What say ye?

 

Ok, I’m kidding. But for real, who knew? Plainville sure looks nice. Imagine how crazy fun it would be! (more or less)

 

Josh, I believe you said you recently started working at the Meyer Library…hmmm…all of the sudden they’re having ”plumbing” problems? 

“Meyer Library has a major plumbing problem on the Lower Level in the Compact Shelving area where the bound periodicals are housed.  The entire east-west corridor between the two bays of compact shelving must be cut out, dug up, new pipe put in and then refilled and new concrete poured.  It is estimated that the work will take anywhere from 4 to 6 weeks.”

My name is Amanda Mae. I am 20 21 years old, and live in Southern California where I attend a conservative university. would call myself a libertarian/moderate politically leaning, and an Anglican catholic religiously speaking, but still seeking.

I am very interested in Flannery O’Connor, in films, music, and art. Film-wise I cherish the 60’s and 70’s golden age of American cinema and I really adore foreign film, especially Truffaut, Antonioni, Wong-Kar Wai and Kieslowski. Musically, I am currently working my way down deeper into the soul of Bob Dylan (I am very close to owning his body of work on vinyl and c.d.) and the Talking Heads.  I don’t know how much this matters anyway.
I am a film major, but I take mostly art and literature classes. My life is not what I ever expected it to be. I also enjoy secrets and surprises.

I enjoy the occasional smoke, and am very bad at smoking pipes, even though I like it.

Current thought projects include Sylvia Plath analysis, reading up on Richard brautigan and Flannery O’Connor’s body of work, as well as current critical theory on her works. I’ve also been thinking a great deal about the nature of love and compassion, and desire for community. Feel free to contact me about anything, I am trying to be more loving, compassionate and desirous of community.

agoodmanishardtofind.org

Hey folks.

I’ve had a few complaints about this blog turning into “another college political rant.” I won’t argue the validity of such statements but I do think it would be a good time to reinstate my (our) vision statement for this blog and recommend a few general rules for us to follow.

First, the vision. I see this blog as Primarily a place for friends and relatives to post updates, pictures of babies and homes, and stories about life and love. Secondarily I see this forum as a place to post philosophical/political/theological ramblings, NOT to prod fellow friends into debate, but as a way to share with all the intellectual journeys we are taking. I hope we all are mature enough not to be offended by the difference between us but instead see it as an opportunity to better ourselves intellectually.

Now, given this vision, let me recommend three general rules/recommendations on posting:
1) Don’t post leading statements with the purpose of spurring debate. Debate is fine and leading statements are fine too – just not here. I have created a Forum for this purpose and it does it’s job quite well. Use it. http://thefriars.net/phpBB/
2) Limit the number of short posts that simply offer links to other blogs or short quotes by someone you’re reading. Again, use the Forum for this. The reason I want to limit these posts is because they tend to clog up the blog. We want the highest number of posts to be about personal happenings/etc.
3) Categorize all posts. Let’s not make people browse through 20 unrelated posts to find the one they are looking for. Use the categories (you can create new ones if needed).

Sound good?

One other thought.
This is OUR blog not MY blog. As far as possible I want this be democratic. If you feel these rules are good/bad or could be better let us know. Comment below.

I am the library guy although I am no longer in the same library in which most of you are used to seeing me. I have employed two ladies who are dear to a couple guys here. Everyone I hired seemed to get married and move away soon thereafter. So I decided to move; to a different job that is. I also bought a house and moved into it recently, making room for my expanding family (one down another on the way).

I once was a fairly speculative person but now I’m trying to publish so I don’t perish. Yeah! I am currently reading: The Joy of Teaching, How It’s Done: An Invitation to Social Research, How to win the culture war, and Exegetical Fallacies.

Alaxender Supertramp, the young man who died from hunger in the wilds of Alaska.

I don’t think I would mind dieing from starvation if I lived out my dreams to its fullest like Alex did. I believe his dreams call to a very basic desire within me, and I can not help but admire Alexander Supertramp. People think him foolish for denying modern amenities and seeking the life of the explorer. Yet how can I condemn him? I believe his desire is one that all men have at some point in there life, however most of them choose to hide it and squelch it until they can no longer feel that desire. Many say Alex was foolish and unprepared. He was not a complete amateur though. He spent 2 years in many different wildernesses and surpassed all of the challenges sent his way. Alex made 2 mistakes that were very easy to make. 1) he assumed that the way to preserve meat in one type of wilderness could be used in another type of wilderness. 2) His knowledge of non-edible parts of plants was incomplete. People say he went unprepared however, he read everything he could on the subject and asked people questions in order to prepare himself. So what is it that draws me to Alexander Supertramp? I guess I admire his honesty, his convictions, his ability to befriend so many throughout his trip, his strength of character and how he lived out his world view without hypocrisy. He chose adventure over safety, and purposely started from scratch in order to test his intelligence and ability to adapt. He chose to befriend the outcast, the lowly, the peasantry of the US. Alexander Supertramp had questions and chose to seek those answers through every aspect of his life.

Well I have been kinda laying low since i wrote the Manifesto, after Stalin and Hitler I lost quite a bit of popularity.  Not much space left for a good old peace loving socialist, McCarthy and friends did their job well.  I guess I am just your average run of the mill guy, student, always the student.  Glad to be blogging with such well thought, like minded folks.  Like to say thanks to the old B-stone for letting me borrow his climbing shoes for the summer, as I spent it living the dirt bag life at the New River Gorge, (climbing, kayaking, and what notting).  Anyway thats about it, and just call me Karl, the whole Marx thing does get rather tiresome.
“I find out of long experience that I admire all nations and hate all governments”
-Mr. Steinbeck, said that

Hi friends. Have you ever consider the crazy amount of corn we all eat day after day?? For real, it’s crazy. Next time you go to McDonalds, consider this:

Soda: ~100% corn (if you take the water out) in the form of high fructose corn syrup (HFCS)
Hamburger: 60%+ corn in the form of corn-fed beef, and HFCS in the ketchup and bun
Fries: Anywhere from 20%-40% corn. You guessed it, corn oil.
Chicken nuggets: 60%+ corn. Corn fed chicken, fried in corn oil, and the chicken is held together by malto-dextrin, a corn product. Plus, they add some HFCS for flavor.
Ice cream: 50% corn. Corn fed momma cow and lots of HFCS.

It’s funny. There aint a bit of corn on the menu but it’s all IN the menu, if you see what I mean. The fun doesn’t stop there either. Take a look in your fridge sometime and observe how full of corn it is. Just about everything in mine, minus some naked vegetables, has corn in it in some form or another. 

So what do you think? Is this a bad thing that we eat so much corn? Eating so much of one thing, especially while SEEMING to eat such a diversity of foodstuffs, seem quite a bit unnatural and, by extension of that, probably a good bit unhealthy as well. Our food culture turns out to be a monoculture in so many ways here in the good ole US of A. Kinda scary imo. 

Plus, did you know that corn is the most heavily subsidized of all agricultural product in America? It’s true. Plus, the way it works actually gives the farmers an ever-increasing motivation to increase their yields every year even if the price of corn goes DOWN. This is the opposite of how most markets work. So, even if the market signals say “slow down, we have enough corn” the subsidies counter by saying “I don’t care! Make more CORN!” 

Hmm…Houston, we have a problem. We are way to corny. In every which way. 

Does anybody else think that MAYBE the cheap fat and sugar calories available in mass due to ridiculously cheap corn has anything to do with our present obesity problem here in the States?

I believe you all already know me, so I am not sure what to write.
Update Number 2:
  My job title at Newmont has changed. I am no longer doing Ore Control but have moved to Projects Engineering. It has been challenging. I have finally gotten through alot of the design/scheduling work for my projects through the end of 2008. Now I have to interact with the Ops people to help make sure things go according to plan. It’s a little slow sometimes but through the help of the General Foreman Dave Sirotek I am getting the hang of interacting with actual people instead of a computer screen. Of course it helps when he realizes I haven’t been out on one of the projects in a few days so he comes in and ask me why 100K tons of material got dumped outside the limits? Those instances help my heart beat a little faster.
  On the outside of work note: It is official. I fell in love with Elko and the people here. Winter months have hit us here which means we’ve had about a foot of snow on the ground for the past month. This means that I have left behing the summer activities of rock climbing and ultimate frisbee, but I have started trying to get into the winter activities to stay inshape. This includes Ice Climbing, and Snowshoeing which are fast becoming my two favorite activites (at least during the winter). I like skiing but not near as much. The winter has driven us indoors alot as well so out came Settler’s of Catan and Chess, as well as wine which I am starting to finally get the hang of. I still have resisted the urge to buy a TV however it is becoming harder and harder. I have found a number of friends that do not know any of the classic B&W or classic Barely Color movies out there. I feel they should be introduced to them and not having a TV of my own to invite them over to watch on hinders that.
End Update Number 2:

Inspirations in my life:

Bob Dylan
Alexander Supertramp
\”Bud\” Federer

Life Dreams:

Jump a train – Completed Aug. 16th
Travel through Europe – Spent 5 days visiting London, Oxford, and Cork, Ireland.
Travel through the Mid-East – Not Completed
Travel through Asia – Not Completed
Learn an instrument (other than the cd-player) – In Progress
Live Simplistically – It is a hard balance to strike. right now I have to much stuff compared to the small number of things to keep it organized; making my apartment continually messy.

Winter Memiors:
5 days in the UK and 5 days in Costa Rica
Climbing my first bit of Ice
Snowshoeing for the first time
Waiting expectantly for comformation class at my Episcopal church to start (Feb 15th!)

Wow, for the first time since 2002 the Stones are networked. We finally have the internet in our apartment. We look forward to meeting all those we don’t know and enjoying a lovely BLOG. God Bless.