In 1952, John William Miller delivered the Phi Beta Kappa address during Hobart College’s commencement. This lecture, “The Scholar as Man of the World,” offers an excellent statement of his philosophy of education. It covers a lot of ground, and in this chap-ter I focus on one of the stated aims of the lecture: exploring the importance of morale for college students. Toward the mid…
Given the fact that there are perhaps 400 billion stars in our Galaxy alone, and perhaps 400 billion galaxies in the Universe, it stands to reason that somewhere out there, in the 14-billion-year-old cosmos, there is or once was a civilization at least as advanced as our own. The sheer enormity of the numbers almost demands that we accept the truth of this hypothesis. Why, then, have we encount…
Trouble Songs is a hybrid serial work that tracks the appearance of the word “trouble” in 20th- and 21st-century American music. It reads (and sings) songs and poems, with reference to cultural events ranging from the death of a pop singer to the growth of popular resistance movements. The trouble singer invokes the word “trouble” in place of actual trouble—the song is a spell that co…
Building on five years of national organizing by Arts in a Changing America, an artist-led initiative that challenges structural racism in the art world, FUTURE/PRESENT includes a range of poetry, essays and criticism, visual and performance art, artist manifestos, interviews, and reflections on community practice.
Automobiles are big and heavy with lots of mechanical moving parts. In the right environment a vehicle can be maintained and repaired safely and effectively. However, in the wrong environment repairing a vehicle can be dangerous. Follow the tips in this chapter to stay safe. One of my first bosses didn't have any feeling sensation in his right hand. He couldnt feel touch or pain in that hand. …
Solarities: Elemental Encounters and Refractions is a transdiciplinary essay collection that explores the physical, conceptual, and political possibilities materialized by “solarity”— a form of relation to the sun and its elemental force upon planetary life. The authors propose that a different set of questions becomes possible when the material specificities of solar become the compass f…
In hisremarkable study of the Upper Palaeolithic parietal art of Western Europe, The Mind in the Cave, David Lewis-Williams suggests that some imagery present in caves such as Chauvet and Lascaux was inspired by ex-periences of altered states of consciousness.1 Emergence from such altered states can be accompanied by the appearance of afterimages, mental pic-tures that hang suspended in the fie…
art the forest & bare the trees. Make an efes. The Book of books may be a forest of woods, as the page is a clearing, the monster is a letter (for example, Y, who reads the leaves), a river is a mirror, the underworld is supernal, the portal is the shadow over the shades, efes are all about (as wings, as aisles, as the edge of the woods), ††† are trees,…