Doing Dishes During War

Posted on July 15, 2025
Image: Michele Lana via Unsplash.

I had to prioritize principles other than survival. These included family, community, and a sense of collective responsibility.

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A Tale of Two Westerns

Posted on July 8, 2025
Image: Kevin Turcios via Unsplash.

The harsh violence of Blood Meridian and Lonesome Dove draw us in more than it repels, and the proximity of death makes the actions of its dramatis personae only more vivid and compelling to us. 

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Phenomenology of a Kiddie Ride

Posted on June 26, 2025
Image: Porky Pig in mid-gallop; photograph by Leann Davis Alspaugh.

Without a doubt, irony plays a large part in the phenomenon of Porky. His mere existence in a fanciful form at a restaurant that specializes in pork meats is deliciously ironic.

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The Self That Never Was

Posted on June 17, 2025
Image: THR illustration/Shutterstock.

We may be approaching a time when the illusion of selfhood is strengthened, not weakened, because we are surrounded by machines enacting it.

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The Political Journey of Thomas Mann

Posted on June 5, 2025
Image: Illustration for Death in Venice by Maurice Denis/Alamy Stock Photos; photograph of Thomas Mann, Zürcher Museen.

Mann understood, almost too well, the allure of tradition and irrationalism, of the poetic and the mystical.

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