Category Archives: Uncategorized

Here’s a dispatch from the site of Florida’s 2022 AFL-CIO COPE and Biennial Convention, where Susan served as one of this year’s AFT delegates. I began writing this post from a hotel room just outside Disney Springs in Orlando and in the now notorious Reedy Creek Improvement District. (If you aren’t familiar with what’s happened inContinue reading “Our nation’s war on the young (June 28, 2022)”

Today is the 140th birthday of James Joyce (1882-1941) and making this one extra special it is the centenary of the publication of Ulysses. In honor of the occasion, here’s a poem I wrote late in the fall of 2020 and which appeared last spring in the final print issue of the much beloved JamesContinue reading “Happy birthday James Joyce (February 2, 2022)”

By 1933 the FZ [Frankfurter Zeitung] had committed itself to a policy which was governed, in [Rudolph] Kircher’s words, by “the law of the lesser evil” (26 June I932). This law continued to be applied after Hitler’s accession to office, and it ordained that compromise was preferable to confrontation, despite the blatantly anti-democratic, racist, and violent natureContinue reading “Compromise and the Fall of a University (November 8, 2021)”

I am sure most of you reading this post are already fully aware of the dire situation at the University of Florida this spring in terms of the coerced face-to-face teaching demanded by the university’s higher administration.  This has become a national scandal and there have been numerous major media reports, of which the following listContinue reading “The Fire This Time (January 29, 2021)”

How long is Haines going to stay in this tower? James Joyce, Ulysses There is a scene early in James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916) that resonates in perhaps unexpected ways with the contemporary nightmare from which we are trying to awake. The scene concerns the early schooling of Joyce’s semi-autobiographical would-beContinue reading “Reading James Joyce and Watching the Gators in 2020 (October 19, 2020)”

posted on September 22, 2020 “Although there may be nothing useful for you in my words, perhaps this example of ready obedience will not be wholly unprofitable to you.” Gregory of Nyssa, The Life of Moses I began this post as note of thanks to a dear friend who had sent to me on Sunday aContinue reading “A Sunday Morning Meditation (September 20, 2020)”

“Hope” is the thing with feathers – That perches in the soul – And sings the tune without the words – And never stops – at all – And sweetest – in the Gale – is heard – And sore must be the storm – That could abash the little Bird That kept so manyContinue reading “Striving for Excellence in 2020; or, Jo Walton’s Utopianism (July 29, 2020)”

He was running. Absolutely running, with nowhere to go. And he was not yet four-and-twenty. Joseph Conrad, Lord Jim (1900) One of the real pleasures of the last few months has been having more opportunities (and motivation) to watch and re-watch a variety of movies. This has included viewings of a number of classics of Hollywood andContinue reading “How do you end the story? or, the not-happily-ever-after of ‘Once Upon a Time in America’ (July 17, 2020)”

Today my book, Invoking Hope: Theory and Utopia in Dark Times (University of Minnesota Press) has been offically released. For anyone who is interested, I did a more than one-hour long interview on the book with University of Florida alum Camelia Raghinaru for her extraordinary and timely podcast, ‘Theory to No End.‘ The book’s mainContinue reading “Invoking Hope Arrives (June 30, 2020)”