pfannkuchea

Avoiding Library Taxes

The tax haven’s university library is interesting. It does not style itself as such, preferring to be called the Luxemburg Learning Centre. This grand title has not been challenged by any other institutions, the national library is content with its equally grand Bibliothèque nationale, but I fear this name signals something different, the LLC feelsContinue reading “Avoiding Library Taxes”

Thinking About Sex in Time of Plague

Reading reviews of Amia Srinivasan’s appealingly entitled essay collection The Right to Sex and her main essay “Does Anyone Have a Right to Sex” (a title and topic that could hardly fail to command the attention of the reading public), I am struck once again, as so often before, by the thematic preponderance of love-as-sexContinue reading “Thinking About Sex in Time of Plague”

Does the Left suffer from Attention Deficit Disorder?

This open letter was originally written and circulated on 23 June, 2020 in the wake of #MeToo and the George Floyd Protests but It is not until recently that we had a space for it. We hope that it is an accurate reflection of our thoughts and feelings of the summer of 2020. Comrades, WeContinue reading “Does the Left suffer from Attention Deficit Disorder?”

Anomic Plague and the Alt Right

I remember the evening last fall spent in conversation with one history professor and several student friends. The professor, a very centrist liberal, was proposing the standard liberal explanation for the alt right: racism pure and simple, an argument that’s been summoned into service on so many occasions of late that it’s as if thereContinue reading “Anomic Plague and the Alt Right”

Teaching an Old Continent

I first went to ISU I wanted to be a high school history teacher. I always wanted to get my Ph.D. in the long run but, for me, what was important was sharing my love of history, and there is no better group of individuals to share it with than a captive audience. As theContinue reading “Teaching an Old Continent”

Hospitals Compared in Light of the Plague

The other day I drove to Chicago for an appointment with my radiation oncologist. With time to kill, I hung out a bit in the DCAM Center for Care and Discovery, a name that sounds more like a theme park than a hospital and compared it to the other hospitals I’ve spent time in inContinue reading “Hospitals Compared in Light of the Plague”

Killing Cops and Myself

I have a playlist titled “Killing Cops and Myself.” It is an eclectic mix of folk, folk-punk, and bluegrass whose central theme is not hard to discern. When I cleaned up the playlist so that I could share it with Andy (Weeks) I had a path I wanted the listener to go down. It isContinue reading “Killing Cops and Myself”

Sources of Lucidity in the Plague Darkness

In recounting how books about death and darkness inoculated me against depression in the plague year, I forgot to mention Victor Serge’s Mexican journals from the last decade of his life. It would be difficult to equal his grounds for depression: a man of boundless energy and deep human sensibility, Serge had experienced the demiseContinue reading “Sources of Lucidity in the Plague Darkness”

Soviet Hauntologies

I never knew the Soviet Union. I never knew Yugoslavia. I never knew a Maoist China or goulash communism. In 1991 something tragic happened. Not only was the greatest experiment in human dignity ended but history ended, or it feels like it did. I never saw any of it. Those few bastions of human dignityContinue reading “Soviet Hauntologies”

Retail Politics in Time of Plague

My closest friends for whom this blog was intended will have heard much of it before. I tend to repeat myself. I try to boil my inchoate experiences down to the essentials and then plot them out for revealing connections. Why did this or that seemingly insignificant experience mean something? Students of literature acquire theseContinue reading “Retail Politics in Time of Plague”