In an article in The Atlantic, “Why the Past 10 Years of American Life Have Been Uniquely Stupid,” Jonathan Haidt mentions James Madison’s recognition that democratic societies can suffer from “the turbulence and weakness of unruly passions.” Haidt points out that to create a “sustainable republic” is to “build in mechanisms to slow things down” and “cool… Continue reading

If you’ve arrived from either my Happened or Hills and Water newsletters, welcome! All the same content will be here, but no longer cluttering up your email inbox. There may still be some rough edges; this is a WordPress site and I haven’t used WordPress in ages (and it seems they’ve upgraded it). Pay attention… Continue reading

This is my latest approach to pasting pages to the walls and poles around town. It’s going to take the place of a couple of SubStack newsletters. When I publish newsletter issues I feel like I’m contributing to the world glut of spam. If you want to read what I publish here, you have to… Continue reading