I am lying in a meadow high in the Rocky Mountains. The sun is warm and comforting. I watch the clouds, puffy white in the blue sky, but soon pull a cap over my eyes…
Old Soldiers
In the August 14, 2009 New York Times there is an article about Albert Perdeck, an eighty-four year old veteran of the Second World War who has never fully recovered from the trauma of having…
Rise and Shine and Shout for Glory
On a recent Friday, the morning opened with bright sun and blue sky. Boulder had had its wettest spring in one hundred years, and this had put a crimp in our hiking regimen. Tornadoes had…
Music, Music, Music, or How Amy Winehouse Made…
Playwright William Congreve said: "Music hath charms to soothe a savage breast, to soften rocks, or bend a knotted oak." And so it does. Perhaps the Russian revolutionary Lenin had Congreve in mind when he…
Mormon Country
Karen and I love the canyon country of southern Utah. Last November, we spent three weeks hiking in the five national parks that span the state from west to east. We drove from Tucson north…
The Blighted Groves of Academe
The more I read about the state of our colleges and universities, the more thankful I am that I quit my job at the University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown (UPJ) in 2001, after thirty-two years…
All The News That's Fit to Steal
In December of last year, Monthly Review magazine, of which I am Associate Editor, published an article by Jim Straub titled "Braddock, Pennsylvania: Out of the Furnace and into the Fire." In his essay, Jim…
The injuries of class
One of the themes of Cheap Motels and a Hot Plate is work. More specifically the theme is dead-end work, how there is so much of this in the United States. Work has always been…
School Starts/Remembering Wyoming
I taught my first class this past Tuesday. It is a large lecture section of seventy students, in a course titled "Globalization and Labor." It was the first time I was in a classroom like…