By Jim Heffernan This is a book I started reading 8 days after the 2020 election, once my shell-shock had dissipated. It started a reading binge that has continued until the present…
Category: Jim Heffernan
BOOK REVIEW: Strangers in Their Own Land
By Jim Heffernan This is Arlie Hochshcild’s 9th and latest book. It was a finalist for a National Book Award. It the result of 5 years research in rural Louisiana into the…
I’ve Been Thinking – The Cowboy Code
By Jim Heffernan I’ve been thinking a lot about what it might take to bring more “niceness” back to our daily lives. That was the goal of the recently posted “Civility Pledge”…
BOOK REVIEW: I’m Still Here – Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness
By Jim Heffernan This month (February) is “Black History Month” and I chose this book because it represents a different take on the black experience. The book is a memoir of a…
I’ve been thinking … Join me & Sign the Pioneer’s Civility Pledge
I’ve been thinking how talking politics has changed over the years, not for the better. I can remember times when two people could have entirely opposite views and still have a civil,…
BOOK REVIEW: Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer
By Jim Heffernan “For all of us, becoming indigenous to a place means living as if your children’s future mattered, to take care of the land as if our lives, both material…
I’ve been thinking … FDR’s Spaceship & Second Bill of Rights
By Jim Heffernan I was thinking about how I might articulate my personal moral and political philosophy in another way and, after a bit, this description jumped out. Both of my parents…
BOOK REVIEW: Dirt Road Revival – How to rebuild rural politics and why our future depends on it
By Jim Heffernan I’m an old man, and most of the books I read are written by people as old or older than me. This book’s authors, Chloe and Canyon, are barely…
I’ve been thinking … Three weeks and 39 mass shootings. This is America in 2023.
By Jim Heffernan With headlines like this, how can I not think a lot about the havoc of guns in America. The numbers are horrific. There needs to be better words than…
I’ve Been Thinking … Debt Peonage
By Jim Heffernan I’ve been thinking a lot about a term I’ve encountered recently. The term is “debt peonage” and the writer Thom Hartmann introduced it to me. Indentured servitude is a…
