Choice


Keguro:
Those who “choose to be gay” offer the disturbing possibility that attachments and affiliations can be chosen outside of state-sanctioned norms. That there are ways of living not envisioned in school textbooks. That how we choose to live matters just as much, if not more, than how we are supposed to live.

To choose what one “likes” over one’s “duty.”

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Over at my other blog, Finite Eyes (about academic subjects, and things related to my job as Interim Director of Interdisciplinary Studies at Plymouth State), I've got a few new posts, including one on the pricing of academic books, which might be of at least vague interest to Mumpsimus readers.

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Ghosts: In Memory of Elizabeth Webb Cheney

My mother died on November 3, 2018. She was, in so many ways, my first reader and my first editor. Five days before her death, she asked me to write her something to read. I went home that night and wrote the following essay. I brought it to her the next day. Her eyesight had weakened, and she didn't have a lot of stamina, but she was able to read a couple paragraphs of it. It turned out to be the last thing I wrote while my mother was alive. I read it at her memorial service, and numerous people asked to have a copy of it, so I am posting it here for all who are interested. 


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Upcoming Publications

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The review originally appeared in the Summer 2015 issue of Rain Taxi.


In Tune: Charley Patton, Jimmie Rodgers, and the Roots of American Music
by Ben Wynne

Louisiana State University Press 


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This review appeared in the Spring 2008 issue of Rain Taxi. (I've left the page references in that RT uses for proofreading, as they may be useful to readers.)

Orpheus in the Bronx:
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