Saturday: Unions, A Better Common Good, Movies, American History, Writing Contests, BSU Cops, Books

 Not much to crow about today.

I worked on the blog this morning, then took off around 10:30 am, and did not come back until around 1 pm.

Before checking out possible new living quarters, I stopped at the Minnestrista Farmers Market. Still lively. I spent money on Thai dumplings and a smash burger - two different vendors. Both were excellent.

Then I walked over to the new possible home. I liked it. 

From there, I thought, let's go to see a movie. Except I stopped first at the Muncie Mall. My medicine had begun to tell. Oh, boy, what a surprise. I do not think I have been in the place for over a year. Well over a year. It looks like a ghost town. Sad. Scary.

I stopped at the pretzel place. Aunt Annies, I think, is the name. I ordered a pretzel with cream cheese. A favorite of mine. Not this time. The cream cheese was powdered. I ate a quarter of the monstrosity before throwing it away.

I walked from there over to the theater. The movie I wanted to see would not start until 1:15. A personal situation persuaded me it was time to go home. The Mall bus is on an hourly schedule. Not good, since I really wanted to get the bad taste of the chalky cream cheese out of my mouth. I walked over to McClure's on Broadway. The first I have been in there since I left the motel. I got a Coke Zero and a pack of smokes. Then I waited for the #5 bus. It was like I had moved back into the neighborhood. While waiting, I played with a dog. That was quite amusing.

Back downtown in time to catch my bus home, the 1:15 #2 bus. Got comfortable and around 2 was napping. I got up around 5:30. I really need to get more exercise.

Then I started cleaning out my email, and this post. All I did for my writing was submitting "No Ordinary Word" to 2025 Summer Short Story Award for New Writers.

The listening for the night was provided by WPRB.

Now, I leave you.

Some readings from today.

Talking about the Constitution with Jill Lepore (Pittsburgh Review of Books) - Lepore is a great writer, glad to see she has something new coming out.

An exacting scholar, Lepore’s over seven-hundred pages provides a deep, contextual perspective on the philosophy and history of the Constitution from the often zestfully democratic state constitutions which preceded it, the frequently rancorous debates that attended its ratification throughout the states, and the challenges it has faced over the course of its history, from capricious executives to civil war. “The framers never intended for the Constitution to be preserved, like a butterfly, under glass,” writes Lepore in We the People, and indeed much of her study is an account not just of the Constitution, but of the competing ways of interpreting the Constitution. Lepore, among our most vital and important public intellectuals, is the perfect scholar for this task of excavation, contextualization, and interpretation. The David Woods Kemper ’41 Professor of American History at Harvard University (she also has an attendant appointment at the law school), Lepore occupies the rare position of being an influential and crucial historian while also being a popular author, including as a regular staff-writer for The New Yorker. “I happen to write about history, but I’m a writer,” Lepore said, explaining that like any writer, whether a novelist or a playwright, she’s primarily interested in “how change is manifested over time.” A combination of rigorous scholarship and immaculate prose style is manifest in Lepore’s bibliography, from her 1998 Bancroft Award winning The Name of War: King Philip’s War and the Origins of American Identity to her 2018 massive, comprehensive national history These Truths: A History of the United States which recalled and surpassed the ambitious attempts at overreaching narratives that were popular a half-century-ago. A specialist in seventeenth and eighteenth-century American history, Lepore’s writing (true to the interdisciplinary nature of her Yale PhD in American Studies) ranges freely, including works like 2014’s The Secret History of Wonder Woman and Joe Gould’s Teeth from two years later, the former a feminist cultural history of the titular superheroine and the later about an eccentric author’s missing manuscript which was rumored to be the longest ever written. “The work of the historian is not the work of the critic or of the moralist,” she writes in These Truths, “it is the work of the sleuth and the storyteller, the philosopher and the scientist, the keeper of tales, the sayer of sooth, the teller of truth.”

Hamilton’s Real Immigration Story (JSTOR Daily)

As it turned out, the restrictions were reversed and US immigration laws remained quite permissive until the anti-Chinese legislation of the 1870s. But it was no thanks to Hamilton.

Moral Economy and the Causes of Wage Inequality (JSTOR Daily) - growing up in Anderson, Indiana with a strong UAW presence and I step-father who was a member, I know full well the negatives of unions. If you expect perfection, you are in the wrong universe. The question is if the benefits outweigh the negatives. For workers, I think they are better than our current situation.

The shifts in both economic inequality and union membership over those years were dramatic: Men’s wage inequality increased by 40 percent and women’s by nearly 50 percent. Private-sector union membership dropped from 34 percent for men in 1973 to 8 percent in 2007 and from 16 to 6 percent for women over the same period.

Strong unions can theoretically reduce inequality in multiple ways. They can reduce the gap between more- and less-educated workers by raising wages for the latter. They can increase pay within a heavily unionized industry as even nonunion employers seek to keep pace or avert union organizing efforts. And they can advocate for public policy such as, for instance, a higher minimum wage. Western and Rosenfeld argue that unions have more broadly contributed to a “moral economy,” promoting “norms of equity that claimed the fairness of a standard rate for low-pay workers and the injustice of unchecked earnings for managers and owners.”

What If? (Sheila Kennedy) illustrates one thing I think is wrong with Americans - a lack of imagination.

 What if we responded to the uncertainty and chaos in Washington, D.C. and around the globe by purposefully retreating behind Rawls’ veil of ignorance, and trying to envision the outlines of a better, more just society?

What if we didn’t respond to uncertainty and fear by clinging more tightly to what we know, to our fears and prejudices and ideas about what constitutes merit, and instead pictured different ways of allocating goods, of answering the question “Who gets what?”

Also from Sheila Kennedy, I recommend No More Dog Whistles. Read it in full, please. 

Movies I would like to see:

49 Literary Movies and TV Shows to Watch This Fall (Literary Hub) - wondering what I can afford, and do I really want to support Paramount+ and Disney and Amazon?)

If I Had Legs I’d Kick You movie review (2025) (Roger Ebert)

Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere movie review (2025) (Roger Ebert) (which doesn't sound like the train wreck of clichés it might have been)

Frankenstein movie review & film summary (2025) (Roger Ebert)

Blue Moon movie review & film summary (2025) (Roger Ebert)

Democracy Noir movie review & film summary (2025) (Roger Ebert) - our right-wing politicians have too much love for Orbán, do we really want this sh*t here?

Nurse and activist Niko Antal is the face of regular protesting, watching funds be funneled out of public health and into stadiums and state museums. She is also representative of a generation, living in a home with her mother, who shares the nationalist views of the Fidesz party. MP Tímea Szabó shows what it’s like to try and dismantle the regime from the inside, becoming a target herself of Orbán’s propaganda and media fire. And Babett Oroszi, a lesbian journalist who focuses on the state’s corruption, fights for the preservation of the small amount of independent news that remains in Hungary. These women are faces of work and hope, and Field’s documentary tells the tale of Orbán through their eyes and pursuits.

“Democracy Noir” outlines the politics of Hungary, but also of a changing world, leaning further into conservatism and authoritarianism. In a chilling sequence, world leaders and politicians gather for a Conservative summit in Hungary, with many American citizens also in attendance, lauding the country as a blueprint for what they hope to see in the United States. So while the film is an informative tale of international politics, it’s also a warning sign and rallying cry for action back home.

BSU, Books, Music: 

Ball State faculty alerted on protocol as law enforcement questions loom (The Daily News) - preparing for ICE in Muncie, Middletown, USA?

The Ball State Daily News received an email that was sent to some staff members on Aug. 19 on behalf of Ball State Provost and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs Anand Marri from Jacquelyn Buckrop, a special assistant for academic operations at Ball State. 

The email reads, “If an outside law enforcement agency approaches you, your faculty, or staff regarding a meeting with a student, please get in touch with UPD (University Police Department) first. You may ask the law enforcement officer to identify themselves and their agency for the purpose of providing the information to UPD dispatch. Contact UPD at 285-1111." 

Broken Sleep Books August 2025 - since I believe Americans need to know what is going on in the wider world.

Member Spotlight: Dzanc Books (Community of Literary Magazines and Presses) - since I find the publisher interesting enough that I would like to get done with my writing to send them something!

A Reading List for National Translation Month 2025 (Community of Literary Magazines and Presses) - since I believe Americans need to know what is going on in the wider world.

Margo Price: Hard Headed Woman Album Review (Pitchfork)

It’s an approach she uses across the album, playing to strengths while dodging pigeonholes. In this political moment, for example, a fan might expect—or even long for—sharp commentary from the outspoken writer of “All American Made.” But here, we get a Dylan-esque heel-turn towards other matters. “We played the jukebox while democracy fell,” she sings wistfully on “Close to You,” a dreamy Mexicali love song that sounds like something from Springsteen’s recent Lost Albums. That disconnect is echoed on “Don’t Wake Me Up,” featuring Jesse Welles, with a video recalling Dylan’s “Subterranean Homesick Blues” protest-sign-cum-cue-card shtick. “Don’t wake me up, I ain’t up for that/The way this world is going, ain’t where I’m at/And sooner or later we’ll all be dead/I’d rather be living it up, up in my head,” the two activist artists sing, positing a refusal to be perpetually triggered as a significant act of resistance in itself.

I like that refusal to be triggered as an act of resistance. I have tried to do this, but then I have this blog to let off steam.

The song of the day; earlier today I sent it to DM and KH with the note that I can see why it was not released this way back in the day - too harrowing. Now, it relieves the song of the cliché it has become. 

sch 9/6