On Saturday, March 26 Jim Harrison died at his cabin near Patagonia, Arizona. He’d been ill and his wife of many years had died the previous October. His loss is grievous one. I’ll miss his books and I’ll miss his wisdom in my life….
I surrender this rifle to you through my young son, whom I now desire to teach in this manner that he has become a friend of the Americans. I wish him to learn the habits of the whites and to be educated as their sons…
Jim Harrison died last Saturday at his cabin outside Patagonia, Arizona. He’d been at a cowboy saloon earlier, drank some vodka, talked to some pals, and went home. He was found later at home, dead of a heart attack. He was one of my constant heroes. I’ve…
White men like to dig in the ground for their food. My people prefer to hunt the buffalo as their fathers did. White men like to stay in one place. My people want to move their tipis here and there to the different hunting grounds….
We must act with vindictive earnestness against the Sioux, even to their extermination, men, women and children. Nothing less will reach the root of the case. Telegram, Sherman to Grant July 1876
The more we can kill this year, the less will have to be killed the next war, for the more I see of these Indians the more convinced I am that all have to be killed or maintained as a species of pauper. Their attempts…
Crawford, Matthew B. The World Beyond Your Head: On Becoming and Individual in an Age of Distraction, Farrar Straus and Giroux, New York, 2015 (305pp.$26) “distracted from distraction by distraction…” “Burnt Norton” T.S. Eliot Distraction and worry are the default modes of human…
Here is a book about automation and its disabling of human ability. Think “auto correct” and “auto pilot”. Zombies of the digital world take note. Carr, Nicholas. The Glass Cage, W.W. Norton Co., New York, 2014 (261pp.$26.95) On May 31, 2009 an Air France Airbus…
Head, Simon. Mindless: Why Smarter Machines are Making Dumber Humans, Basic Books (Perseus Books Group), New York, 2013 (230pp., $26.99) Eighty years ago the English economist John Maynard Keynes authored a brief essay entitled “Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren”, in which he took a…
“More help with the sorrows of the digital age…” Holmes, Jamie. Nonsense: The Power of Not Knowing, Crown Publishers, New York, 2015 (322pp.$27) “It is time for writers to admit that nothing in this world makes sense,” Chekhov wrote to a friend. “Only fools…