Tag: economics

Válka s Mloky

gordsellar0 Comments

“Nowadays we simply cannot wait a few hundred years for something good or bad to happen in the world. Take the migration of peoples which used to drag on over several centuries: today, with our present organization of transport, it could be accomplished in three years; otherwise there would be in profit in it. The same is true of the liquidation of the Roman Empire, the colonisation of the continents, the extermination of the Red Indians, and so on. All these things could have been accomplished incomparably more speedily if they had been put in the hands of entrepreneurs with …

Continue Reading

Depression, Recession, and Other Kid Stuff

gordsellar0 Comments

In what seems to be Economic Depression Week here on my blog, another interesting thinglet via Critique de Mr. Chompchomp: What happens to kids’ lit during times of economic collapse, hardship, and woe? If you’re like me, you’re thinking about Ramona Quimby (one of the characters I grew up reading about, bless Beverly Cleary) and Dickens’ Oliver Twist. Well, the former comes up in this excellent slide show by Erica S. Perl detailing the intersections between economic poverty and kidlit. And by the way, there’s a great interview with Beverly Cleary here. Cleary seems exactly like the kind of person …

Continue Reading

Who Do You Think You Are?

gordsellar0 Comments

Continuing on the Great Depression theme from yesterday’s post: the current episode of This American Life, #368 which was titled, “Who Do You Think You Are?” is outstanding, featuring old interviews of people who’d survived the Hoovervilles of the Great Depression, the horrors of the Second World War, and all the chaos that followed on that time. Parts are very moving. And then there’s a discussion of what it’s like to see a black president from the point of view of a man who remembers explicit segregation and unrepentantly open racism against him as a black American — as a …

Continue Reading

No Depression in Heaven

gordsellar0 Comments

I don’t usually use soundtracks for posts, but hey, it’s always worth doing something a little different sometimes, right? My friend Jack was, when I first met him, a devoted inhabitant of that space where black and white and poor and crazy meet in early American music. He introduced me to musicians like Ralph Stanley and the Blue Sky Boys, and showed me how they connected to people like Howlin’ Wolf and Mississippi Fred McDowell. It was with Jack that I first heard McDowell, and Robert Johnson, and so much other music, and was initiated into the secret history of …

Continue Reading