Hillbilly Epithet: A Comment on Prejudices and Caricatures
The senior faculty member at a student-faculty retreat introduced me to the student body as a hillbilly, the resident hillbilly.
Author: John David Duke Jr
A Reverie on Failure Part 8: Across the Road for a Change
We are prepossessed to think we can capture mutability, but the very notion is futile. It’s an interesting conundrum
A Reverie on Failure Part 7: Nature Selects for Deception
There exists a particular routine you get into: you scan the edge of the field for movement, but every so often, an animal simply materializes in the middle of the field
Wistful for War: The Flawed Nostalgia of the Steel Playground Slide
Those playgrounds and slides were built in the near memory of one of the worst things that has ever happened to the world
A Reverie on Failure Part 6: A Shadow Falls Upon a Friendship
I cast a first shadow upon a friendship. Oh, how petty Kid Icarus! Why didn’t I just punch him in the mouth?
A Reverie On Failure Part 5: The Dawn of Disappointment
I hereby confess to you, dear reader, that when I consider you, I am pitiless. In what manner do you deal out in judgment to me?
A Reverie on Failure Part 4: Gerrymandered Ludditism
A moral gerrymandering of my personal Ludditism can become disciplined if I filter that jagged line through the lens of the human condition.
Within the Sarcophagus of Virtue
What about forgiveness? Who has the power to forgive Freddie deBoer? More importantly, who has the authority to forgive him?
Aesthetics Revisited: A Lutheran, Catholic School, and Brideshead
I invite you to be enthralled with Brideshead Revisited, which makes a television masterpiece of a literary masterpiece
The Memorabilia Which Shape Me
This was certainly a memorable occasion for me, but it belongs in a closet full of memorabilia, events just like that, all crowding forward
A Reverie on Failure Part 3: The Apex Predators
I am the hunter right now. The woods are anxious about me. I am the apex predator, armed in self-defense and lethal offense. This is calming.
A Reverie On Failure Part 2: The Trials Brought by Love Thy Neighbor
People trade in indignation & outrage. I imagine we justify ourselves using this currency by appealing to the evil deeds of our neighbor.
A Reverie On Failure Part 1: Walking Into a Warm Meadow with a Leather-bound Journal
Here is my journal which I kept from October 5 to December 21, edited for readability, followed by periodic commentary.
The Jubilee Year: Or How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love You
Turning the calendar page is only a reminder that we have little power over a few affairs scattered here and there.
One Is the Loneliest Number
If there is not a one atop the denominator, there is no longer a declaration of The Faith; instead, adherents are reduced to arguing probabilities.
Sclerotic Institutions and The Comfort of a Demographic Death
Enduring institutional death is a difficulty of another magnitude and rising again is all but impossible. But some can die healthy deaths.
The Dispossession of the Post-war Boom
Buffalo’s pride has made it like Capernaum: instead of the Roman Empire, she is oppressed by the Empire State, who hates its own people.
Best Meal Ever Week: Suyapa by the Sea
Every fiber of my being screamed with pleasure when I laid eyes on the syrupy nectar oozing into the many clefts within this exquisitely prepared fish.
Richard Pryor’s Father and the Transforming Truth of Fatherhood
The fear of my father is transforming, evolving, not less in fear, but growing in it, producing a fruit, of sorts.
The Riddle of The Mother
Now I’m wondering whether the professor wrote the riddle because it was already a dangerous question in mid-19th Century Germany.
