Ben Franklin & the (culture of the) Middle Class

an american conversation with petra: Ben Franklin & the Middle Class: "In this article, Ben Franklin's Nation, David Brooks talks about what the United States' rank in the world means to our perception of o..."

Thanks to Petra and David Brooks for this anticipation of our concerns in 102!  We'll be investigating and pondering various sorts of "voluntary associations" that contribute to civil society.  As we do so, this animated data set about life expectancy and wealth may be of interest.  FROM WANT?

the dream before us

NPR Books

‎"Oh, it's delightful to have ambitions. I'm so glad I have such a lot. And there never seems to be any end to them-- that's the best of it. Just as soon as you attain to one ambition you see another one glittering higher up still. It does make life so interesting."
— L.M. Montgomery (Anne of Green Gables)

 So, is it true that the American dream is of whatever is just over the horizon? There is never end to it? Is this what drives us to keep at it, to hope for a new day, to believe that there will be change?

 If so, maybe we should change our national anthem to "Somewhere over the rainbow."

Perfect freedom

"The perfect freedom of a single necessity"  a fragment from Annie Dillard's essay, "Living Like a Weasel."

The famous 1991 Halloween blizzard

Dillard's graphic image is of the weasel's skeleton with its teeth clamped into the neck of a predatory bird, perhaps an eagle.  But today my image is of a blizzard insisting that we all stay home and thereby bestowing freedom from ACTs, concerts, Christmas shopping, and any number of other competing opportunities and responsibilities.  I know that this is not freedom for some who wanted to do those things or for those who still must be out plowing or selling groceries or otherwise taking care of business.  Even in my house there is work to be done: grading, and bill paying, and making cookies.  But the doing of it, with the horizontal snow blowing outside the window and an occasional bird landing on the feeder, seems more like freedom than captivity today.  And even though I'm still blogging and checking up on other people on Facebook, I realize that this freedom is freedom from distraction as well as from decisions.

ripples of freedom

The power of an idea that can not be contained by its originator's intentions.

spiritualism and final essay assignments

Gosh, in the midst of talking to students about their assignment for the end of the term I realized that we've asked them to do something rather "era appropriate."  (This little phrase picking up on "developmentally appropriate" as when a two year old repeats "no, No, NO, NO," or a teenager seems always a bit unfinished, or a middle-aged professor begins to lose track of her papers.)


The "common place" blog intentionally picked up on the common place book, something Jefferson kept.  Now, we ask you/them to write a letter from 2010 to a person in the 1860s.  This reminds me, in an "era appropriate" way of the craze for spiritualism in the 19th century.  Can you imagine yourself gathered around a table with a medium who promises to be in contact with the "dear departed"?  (And, why does writing about this topic require so many scare quotes?)

More seriously, this assignment and this observation both suggest that a liberal arts education puts lively young students in conversation with dead people in the hope that the world in the future will be a place worth living in.  For Christians this notion that community extends across time, both into the past and into the life beyond, is common; but, for Americans it might be a bit of a stretch to consider how both the now dead and those not yet born are part of the conversation.  A stretch, but a valuable effort.