Reading Circle Books

Lifelong learning together

Ex Libris

Letter to a Young Voter

It’s late in the election cycle, and I do not know if you have yet registered to vote, but I exhort you as my fellow citizen, my political friend, to go and vote. And after that, to participate in other ways, by reading, commenting, contributing, serving, listening, speaking, advocating. Politics grows from the practice of everyday life in the presence of strangers and friends. It doesn’t matter whether you have everything figured out yet — just participate. Be devoted — make a sacrifice of devotion — to the city and nation in which you have found yourself. They are your family, and they need you.

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Studs Terkel, 1912-2008

Studs Terkel, that great & generous soul, has passed on. For me, the voice of Studs Terkel will always symbolize a combination of passionate curiosity, prophetic conviction, and deeply generous, fatherly love. He delighted in the people of the world, and shared his delight with us.

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Another Halloween

It’s that time of year again, when our culture takes a holiday originating in fall harvest and the passing of generations, and turns it into a celebration of imagination, childhood, community, misrule, aggression, terror, & trauma (as well as another opportunity for a capitalist binge).

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What’s on Your Plate?

One of the things that has blessed us in our time in this part of Wisconsin has been the chance to live close to our food. It’s not that we sat farther from our plates in the city where I grew up, of course; it’s that we sat further away from the land that was our food’s native home.

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My Kind of Expert

“The very idea that there is no truth, but only the filter of narrative through which truth is invented is something I learned at the feet of the most leftist professors at Yale and am learning again from Sarah Palin during the Vice Presidential debate, and I find that very disorienting.”

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Math Against Tyranny — Understanding the Electoral College

“Experts, scholars, deep thinkers could make errors on electoral reform,” Alan Natapoff decided, “but nine-year-olds could explain to a Martian why the Yankees lost in 1960, and why it was right. And both have the same underlying abstract principle.”

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Poverty Bibliography (Blog Action Day 2008)

A bibliography for Blog Action Day 2008: Poverty. A collection of readings on economics and poverty, for parents, kids, and churches. “You cannot reduce poverty if you don’t know what poverty is.”

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