In looking at the categories I’ve used since launching this blog a decade ago, I feel I should explain why I’ve resisted adding to them.
I simply wanted to retain some kind of focus on what I’d envisioned as a merry-go-round. Yes, the categories were the selected horses to ride.
Think of “American Affairs,” largely inspired by an academic department that Indiana University and Yale and a few others launched in the mid-‘60s to encapsulate a multicultural investigation of current affairs. I nearly embraced it as my own major, the way some Blacks turned to Swahili.
Hey, I had a girlfriend who saw that regarding her own eldest brother. Back off, please, and let’s get back to subject.
What I’ve found in practice here at the Red Barn is that my Am Affairs specific pigeonhole has increasingly probed local public states, especially in Dover, New Hampshire, and more recently, Eastport in Way Downeast Maine.
Or, as the adage goes, all politics are local. (Should that be “is”?)
The writer Tom Wolfe was someone I had thought followed this American Affairs college degree path, but I find myself mistaken, at least as far as academia goes. Still, I would list him as an inspiration here, just shorn of the heap of superlative adjectives, expletives, and adverbs.
But our localities do get lost in the national mass-media mindset, to the impoverishment of us all.
Or, as the French said, “Vive la difference!”
Actually, as I’m realizing, that also applies to my latest book, Quaking Dover.
Jnana's Red Barn 