Category > Traveling at Home
This column, Traveling at Home, started as a way to describe my own process of trying to stay put in Central Illinois, to dig a little deeper into one place. As I’ve tried to write about this, two things have become obvious to me and to both of my readers. First, I drive a lot, and so I write about driving. Second, I read a lot. In fact, I read while driving (usually downloaded books). And the reading and …
| Just about a century ago, Edgar Lee Masters published his Spoon River Anthology, a collection of dramatic monologues set in the fictional, but very real, community of Spoon River, Illinois. More accurately, the poems grew from the town’s graveyard, individuals giving voice to their own lives after their deaths. While individual lives and voices stand out, the overall effect is a pointed, critical, yet not entirely negative view of small town Midwestern life near the end of the 19th century. …
At the writer's retreat in Vermont, yellow Adirondack chairs look up to the Green Mountains. Robert Frost's writing cabin is a two-mile walk from the inn. And each morning I walk down through dense woods towards the Middlebury River to sit on a log covered so thick with lichen that it feels like a low, damp chair. I'm here to work with young writers, and, really how hard could it be in a setting like this? Send them outside. Ask …
The past two weeks have brought the first flush of this year’s spring — steady rains, then hours of sun; dandelions, flowering trees, and deep grass that needs mowing. Lilac blossoms scent the city; they bring to my senses the six or eight lilac bushes that marked the border between our drive and the neighbor’s yard when I was a kid. Thick as trees, these large, old plants bore enough fruit to overwhelm the whole neighborhood. So I’ve clipped a …
I bought my son a purple metal spade. It was the same day I bought $60 worth of herbs and vegetables at Prairie Gardens. We potted the herbs one of those warm afternoons in March. When he decided he dipdn’t really like helping with this dirty project, I potted the tomato plants and the lettuce starts myself. I had to buy myself another spade and more potting soil. He was busy playing super-hero sword boy with his little shovel. Or …
Five Short Reflections (and a footnote): 1) Five abandoned toilets sit side by side under a pair of scraggly trees. The white porcelain is vivid against the gray sky, all of it backed by acres and acres of a stubbled March cornfield. I'm on Route 47 headed south, a mile or two from I-74, on a drive I take every week. I know all the weathered, tilting barns and crumbling farm houses between Mahomet and Dwight. I know the cemeteries …
A few days ago the Obama administration announced its intentions to plant a garden smack in the middle of the White House lawn. During the campaign, advocates of organic gardening and the slow food movement pushed hard for this symbolic act, none more so than journalist and UC-Berkeley professor Michael Pollan. In Pollan’s open letter to the next president, whom he addresses as “farmer in chief,” Pollan wrote bluntly: “tear out five prime south-facing acres of the White House lawn …
I am sighing audibly and angrily (a bad habit I've been told) while carrying a dresser up the narrow staircase of my rental house. Two buddies and I have spent the morning transporting my stuff around the corner; this is the second shortest move I've ever made. We carry the usual academic's belongings: books, shelves, desks, heavy metal file cabinets — the detritus I've accumulated and winnowed for 20 years. Not counting college, I've moved somewhere around 14 times, and …
Traveling at Home, the title of this column, comes from poet Wendell Berry, the cranky, patron prophet of writing about place. Invested fully in writing about his native landscape of Kentucky, Berry insists that "Even in a country you know by heart / it’s hard to go the same way twice." I have always taken this as a moral admonition to get to know a single place in the world, to stay put somewhere long enough to notice its subtleties …
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Dangit! Now I have to go home and try that cake. MMMmmMMMMmmmm looks goood. Cakey cakey cakey…
Amen. When I told people I’ve lost 18 pounds since early October the number one response I get from women is concern. 18 pounds in four months is not unhealthy, quite the opposite for me. But don’t give up on sugar, or become a vegan, or do…
The whole self-acceptance idea is tricky in itself too. Are we supposed to self-accept by sitting around like bumps on logs, doing nothing but just appreciating and accepting ourselves? Life doesn’t happen like that. I like your point about pushing ourselves to do something greater. Self-challenge and self-reflection…
lindsey - i certainly understand where you are coming from on that one. and i just wanted to state for the record that in no way did i mean to imply that i am not a feminist (or a liberal) just that i find that whole…
re: body image—i find it very hard to hear my own true voice in the midst of all the other ones - either the voices from the “beauty industry” demanding total perfection or the ones from the feminist community (which i am a part of, proudly) demanding…
Relevant article, this should be noticed/discussed more often. But I will say the more important issue is our exhaling and plants inhaling. That is much more important and deadly and dangerous. Oh and soda manufacturing and farting. As long as we have the wealthiest people/major polluters on…
This is wonderful Ryan, thanks for the comment: “I am the Supply and Donation Clerk for Cunningham Children’s Home and I would be happy to pick up any gently used toys (with the exception of stuffed animals) for kids of all ages. Just call 367-3728 Ext 201…
You mention the plastic trash floating in the ocean, and that’s actually the case right now. There are continent size plastic junk fields in gyres in the Pacific and Atlantic right now. Also, thank you all for not feeding the trolls.
I am the Supply and Donation Clerk for Cunningham Children’s Home and I would be happy to pick up any gently used toys (with the exception of stuffed animals) for kids of all ages. Just call 367-3728 Ext 201 to arrange a pick-up. I agree with the…
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Have no money to buy a car? Do not worry, because this is achievable to take the mortgage loans to resolve such kind of problems. So get a credit loan to buy everything you want.
ESPN360!!!!! For those that don’t know, you can watch the ESPNs’ games on your puter.
...and given the lack of smiley emoticons i chose to employ, that reads far more sarcastically than i ever intended (my apologies). i actually find this to be a great article and an interesting discussion, seriously : )
Once it leaves the basement, it is then called what? hmmm…....could it be mainstream? accessible? appealing on a mass-level? POP??? Quickly it will become a fad, over-saturate the media, and piss people off. Then everyone can write articles based on how that shit sucks, too. chickens are…
So John is seeing all comments as being authored by John. I am seeing all comments as authored by me. The first comment was Mysterious McDade who evidently acquired an Optimism Hat and is now seeing how it fits.
No, everyone is me! Muahahaha! I so didn’t make that first comment so I thought maybe someone was trying to get my goat, adding me to the staff. I hope jumping to that conclusion is forgivable. Yeah, uh, I guess I should say that I swear I…
I have reached Nirvana, I guess. Everyone is me.
Something weird is happening.
WTF guys? Does impersonating a user in the comments section run afoul of your commenting policy?
In general, I think music is much more interesting now than in 1995. I definitely am very glad contemporary music has expanded beyond the four-piece rock lineup that dominated much of the 90’s. The point of the above isn’t so much about a sound or an instrument…
2010 is not 1995. I’m not sure why anyone would expect a music scene to remain stationary as the world of popular music moves around it. Also, today, making popular music with mainstream appeal and being innovative and cutting-edge are usually exact opposites.
I didn’t know that the LED was created here. That’s awesome.
It’s a total shame this is only during working hours! It sounds great, but I’m one of those who can’t slip away very readily during the 9-to-5. Next time, a request: weekend events, please?
After going over this composition I major in a lot on how to draft articles. As a graduate, I have neveraccomplishrd one natural paper and always use custom dissertation. What a shame! But now I have backbone in writing. Thank you.
Nuts. Sorry I saw this, um, 15 minutes before CULitFest (my term!) begins. However, one deficit - no beer. SP.com 1, UIUC 0. In all seriousness, hope it goes well!
This is federal money, yes. But it is money going to a network that is going to be owned by an inter-governmental of the two cities and the University, not by the federal government. If you’re worried about the local governments spying on us, that’s fine, but…
Prediction: Selection Sunday 2011, Illinois will be vying for a real #1 seed.
bhrama- thanks for the promo. it is true, crane and badger will be playing on friday at mike and mollys w/ the chemicals and tractor kings. we will be playing first. show starts at 10pm. come on out. rock will be had.
Heard there is a new rock band (Crane & Badger-2nd show) playing @ Mike’s this Friday night. Certified rock-styley.
Change is the only constant thing in this world. Change is just an indication that a particular place is improving or not. It is a good thing that there is a room for a change but it must be a change for the better. It is just…
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I found that cake thing about a year ago. It’s pretty amazing. Happily, it didn’t stick as a habit ‘cause I *still* made a mess with the flour and cocoa and all that ...