Among the notable observations I have made during recent trips to Orlando, Florida, were the highway signs pointing to Celebration. Thinking this was some strange slang Floridians use for Disney World, I later learned Celebration is a community designed by Walt Disney Company as a model city of the future. This whole idea of creating [...]
The sacred cow idea plagues modern discourse in the United States. In our polarizing environment, many people on all sides of a debate cling tightly to their beliefs. This causes a mind closure that prohibits new material from entering. I have witnessed this paralyzing closure and the pain it causes many times. The idea that [...]
Finding fiction that I like can be a great challenge for me, so I tend to research potential candidates to make the process efficient. I tend to stick with ideas that resonate somehow with my worldview. Thankfully I have a wide interest field to choose from and know what topics to avoid, such as economics, [...]
I am no expert in graphic novels. I typically read graphic novels only at the recommendation of others. Jonathan Hickman’s Pax Romana came to me thanks in part to my interest in the Catholic Church. I’ll fall asleep reading anything about economics, but start a discussion about Popes, transubstantiation, or sacraments and I’ll fall over [...]
An American Type is a posthumous work by Henry Roth. Edited by The New Yorker magazine fiction editor Willing Davidson, An American Type is an autobiographical novel and a continuation of Roth’s previous novels, a fact I failed to recognize before requesting a review copy. Set during the Great Depression, Roth’s alter ego Ira is [...]
University of Minnesota Duluth professor Linda LeGarde Grover’s The Dance Boots is an interconnected short story collection about indigenous families from the fictional Mozhay Point Indian Reservation set in northern Minnesota. Spanning several decades in the twentieth century, the stories of the families in The Dance Boots show the disturbing reality many indigenous families deal [...]
Dossie Easton and Janet W. Hardy’s The Ethical Slut is the practical guide for someone who wants to engage in polyamory or open relationships. Easton and Hardy provide valuable practical advice on negotiating boundaries & agreements, practicing safe sex, and the importance of obtaining consent. Many polyamorous forms are explored in this book, along with [...]
Being the only non-Minnesotan in my family, I had to take a history course in college to learn about the state I moved to some sixteen years ago. So in 2004, my second course at Augsburg College was Bill Green’s Minnesota History. Green, who recently stepped down after four years serving as Minneapolis’ public school [...]
Digging through the self-help and psychology sections of Half-Price Books can be a tedious affair. I have found that Shambhala Publications rarely goes wrong with a book, and Miriam Greenspan’s Healing Through the Dark Emotions is a gem. There are few psychological professionals that truly embrace a holistic healing approach, and Greenspan is a leader [...]
Whenever I read psychology books, I am wary of putting in the effort only to just waste my time. For every quality data-driven and well-argued psychology book, there are possibly ten other failures that pander to the latest psychological trend. Whether they fail from poor data analysis or simply rehash known issues, junk psychology books [...]
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