Imbolc\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Waxing Moon of Winds<\/p>\n
Finished the Asmat tour and a visual thinking strategies (VTS) tour for 3rd graders.\u00a0 I give them tomorrow morning.<\/p>\n
Put together the legislative update for the Sierra Club blog and a morning entry for the Star-Trib.\u00a0 Soon, it will be nap time.<\/p>\n
This afternoon and over the weekend I’ll dig back into the American Identity piece for the 15th. It’s been fallow since Monday, but it has not disappeared from my consciousness.\u00a0 I’m leaning now toward a definite geographic hook, an addition to the more usual psycho-political work I’ve read in Huntington and some of the other essays.\u00a0 I’m not sure yet whether I consider it an equivalent to those notions or whether it is a more important category.<\/p>\n
Here’s what I mean.\u00a0 The notion of a nation is abstract, in the instance of a nation as geographically large as the USA, it can become even more abstract.\u00a0 My hunch is that, as all politics are local, so are all experiences of national identity.\u00a0 In other words, my experience of my land, my hometown, my home state or region is, both of necessity and emotional depth, the basic ingredient of my affection for my native land.<\/p>\n
That is not to say that This land is my land, from California to the New York Island doesn’t also inform my national identity.\u00a0 I feel the Rockies and hollers of Appalachia, the rain forests of Washington State and the glaciers of Montana have a place in my sense of national identity, some of them in spite of my never having visited them.\u00a0 They recede in importance for me, however, when I compare them to acre after acre of corn and wheat.\u00a0 They do not have the emotional resonance for me the Great Lakes have, especially Huron, Michigan and Superior.\u00a0 My life has been lived in the towns and cities of the Midwest and I love the Midwest.\u00a0 When I think of my US identity, I think first of the Midwest.<\/p>\n
More on this to come.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Imbolc\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Waxing Moon of Winds Finished the Asmat tour and a visual thinking strategies (VTS) tour for 3rd graders.\u00a0 I give them tomorrow morning. Put together the legislative update for the Sierra Club blog and a morning entry for the Star-Trib.\u00a0 Soon, it will be nap time. This afternoon and over the weekend I’ll dig … Continue reading I Love the Midwest<\/span>