We Are Not Children

Posted by on June 13, 2011 · Leave a Comment 

image of Indian man being forcibly lifted for a rear beating with a "war stick" by a white man

A lot of rad­i­cals talk about a deeper eye-​​opening than the stan­dard lib­eral affair. My whole life, I’ve been a dyed-​​in-​​the-​​wool left­ist. But, now, as this research takes me just past the sur­face, and into first-​​hand accounts of US gov­ern­men­tal bru­tal­ity, I… well, I don’t know what to do.

Category 19th Century, Indigenous Issues · Tags , , ,

Stylized Speak

Posted by on June 5, 2011 · 2 Comments 

Omaha Camp

After three weeks of Bill Comp­ton stammer-​​blathering about lady­like pro­pri­ety, I’m some­how still inter­ested in styl­ized speech. Rather, how prob­lem­atic it is in the his­tory books. This isn’t exactly a com­plaint – more a lament. And one with­out a tidy answer.

Category 17th Century & earlier, 19th Century, 2. Reservoir, 3. Saltwater, Appropriation, Craft, It's a Process · Tags , ,

Oh, Yeah… Slavery

Posted by on January 16, 2011 · 4 Comments 

Some­times I jump­start new areas of inter­est in this book by googling gen­eral his­tory. Links daisy­chain, and soon, BAM. A cor­ner­stone of the story. Today’s les­son is no less dra­matic than other dis­cov­er­ies (Metacom’s War; the project’s ori­gins): let’s start talk­ing about North­ern slav­ery. This arti­cle on Boston.com (from Sep­tem­ber of last year) makes a good start­ing place. I’m far from an expert the arti­cle caught me by sur­prise, both for its con­tent and my igno­rance. So I don’t expect this post to serve for more than a point of ori­gin. That said, there are sev­eral inter­est­ing things going on in Latour’s piece, and for my money, a lot of it revolves around Joanne Pope…

Category 17th Century & earlier, 19th Century · Tags

News Flash: what happens when you let the guns write history

Posted by on February 24, 2007 · Leave a Comment 

Even the white his­to­ries con­tra­dict each other. Holy shit. This is gonna more fun than I’d realized.

Category 17th Century & earlier, 19th Century, 20th Century, History, Philosophy · Tags

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What's all this, then?

I’m writ­ing a book to under­stand my hometown’s dis­in­ter­est in its own his­tory, and my role in that. It’s sort of become a novel. This is the full story.

This is my play­ground. It reflects and pre­dicts what’s hap­pen­ing in the book.

Things I dis­cuss: East­ern Mass. his­tory, sto­ry­telling, book­mak­ing, time travel, poetry & nov­els, writ­ing craft, dreams, pub­lish­ing, indige­nous per­spec­tives, spir­i­tu­al­ity, sex, adop­tion and par­ent­ing, research, and what­ever I can’t get outta my head.