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 day. I just could not believe how far out of step I was with nearly half of my fellow citizens. Thomas Frank was born in 1965 and grew…
Category: I’ve been thinking
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 “deep story” of working class people who are sympathetic to Tea Party beliefs. When she’s not writing or researching, she’s a Professor of Sociology at University of California…
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” (See below for link.) Samuel Adams, at our nation’s birth said, “I thank God that I have lived to see my country independent and free. She may long…
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 woman born in 1984 who mainly grows up in a very white suburb of Toledo. Her parents named her “Austin” with the express idea that the name would…
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, even jovial, conversation about their views. It doesn’t seem to happen much anymore. Verbal mud balls seem to be a preference. It’s always tempting to blame others for…
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 and spiritual, depend on it.” Robin Wall Kimmerer is a professor and a citizen of the Potawatomi* nation. In college, she wasn’t sure if she wanted to study…
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 were 12 years old when the Stock Market crashed in 1929 and ushered in the “Great Depression.” Both of their fathers died when they were 16. Both were…
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 in their thirties. Chloe, the candidate, and Canyon, the campaign manager, managed to win State House and Senate elections in a rural and very red corner of Maine….
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 tragic and heart-breaking. September 11, 2001, when the Twin Towers and the Pentagon were attacked, will always be remembered. 3,000 people were killed and we mourned them. We…
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 form of debt peonage. An indentured servant agrees to work for a certain period of time for their master and at the end of their term they become…