Op-Ed column in @greenfieldrecorder.bsky.social yesterday, which hits for me. I think of it as the “sucker economy.” #SuckerEconomy #BeerBaseballAndTheBible
Andrew Varnon
@andrew-varnon.bsky.social
Middle-aged adventurer of the ordinary. #GreenfieldMA #BeerBaseballAndTheBible #BigMessyAmerica #Tennis #PublicSchools Neurodiversity & Sexual Assault awareness. Poet & Essayist. ArtSpace board member. Check out my #Varticles (Varnon + Articles, get it?)
Elite universities, as we know them, were molded into their current form by Cold War spending.
Larry Glickman@larryglickman.bsky.social · yesterdayElite universities mea culpas about the “loss of trust” in higher education so often fail to consider the force of the longterm propagandistic attack on universities, given extensive play in conservative media, that long preceded Trump, but which he has massively accelerated.
To travel, in one sentence, from utter loneliness to transcendent community.
Fifty-three years later, relevant again.
Randall Stephens@randalljstephens.bsky.social · 2d ago"Ghosts out of Pandora's Box." Roy Justus, August 1973.
After listening to a Robert Rogers book, I'm now on to listening to Joseph Ellis's "The Cause." One of the things I'm interested in is the notion of the Americans as amateurs, especially considering the Continental Army vs. the British Army. wwnorton.com/books/978132...
The Cause
New York Times Book Review — Editors’ Choice • Chicago Tribune — "60 Best Reads for Right Now" • St. Louis Post-Dispatch — "50 Fall Books You Should Consider Reading" Challenging conventional wisdom, ...
wwnorton.com
For #Varticles, this is my essay #RetreatingIntoTheCorn, which is an effort to write something about the novel Shoeless Joe, the history of baseball, and my father, who has dementia. andrewvarnon.substack.com/p/retreating...
Retreating into the Corn
Reading W.P. Kinsella’s novel Shoeless Joe while my father’s memories fade
andrewvarnon.substack.com
This Thomas Cole painting was the subject of a warmup prompt on the Fall of Rome in a 9th grade World History Course that I sit in on. It led me to find a Libertarian take on Cole and the interesting "loco foco" movement in the early 1800s America. www.libertarianism.org/columns/art-...
"Is the Age of Individualism Coming to an End?" came up when I searched for when individualism becomes anti-social. It's a question I've been asking about. philosophynow.org/issues/120/I...
Is The Age Of Individualism Coming To An End? | Issue 120 | Philosophy Now
Michael Foley says that perhaps we are all becoming more sociable.
philosophynow.org
Which Hell Canto is this? #EzraPound www.propublica.org/article/fbi-...
The FBI Anti-Corruption Squad Was Circling Susan Collins — Until Trump Got in the Way
After the FBI caught a defense contractor’s CEO making illegal campaign contributions, it sought to launch a sweeping political bribery probe involving Collins and others. Then the second Trump admini...
propublica.org
I have heard that there's a place in Northampton, a video rental co-op, that's like an old-school video rental store. This is a very Valley idea. I love it. #WesternMass www.visionsvideo.org
Visions Video – Non-Profit Video Store in Western Massachuset
visionsvideo.org
Tom Gilbert's new book on Jim Creighton, who died at age 21 after bursting his innards with a mighty swing of his bat: John Henry of the baseball diamond. Creighton is credited for pioneering the adversarial pitcher/hitter dynamic now key to the game. godine.com/products/dea...
Death in the Strike Zone
“A fascinating must-read for baseball history buffs.”—Publishers Weekly He threw the first fastball. The first curveball. He was baseball’s first star—and its first tragedy.In Death in the Strike Zone...
godine.com
I remember reading this essay on National Defense by Wendell Berry when I was in college and it made a lot of sense to me. archive.aperture.org/article/1988...
Property, Patriotism And National Defense | Aperture | Spring 1988
archive.aperture.org
If Donald Trump is teaching us something, it is that we, as Americans, are — and have been — far too willing to assume that riches pass for wisdom, and money is credibility.
Read my essay #RetreatingIntoTheCorn! I made a video to ask you. youtu.be/ZEghhMmja7s?...
Retreating Into the Corn - Essay promo
YouTube video by Andrew Varnon
youtu.be
Given the essay that I've been parceling out, #RetreatingIntoTheCorn, I should perhaps have found the podcast #TheMidnightLibraryOfBaseball sooner. But I didn't. This morning, I actually listened to an episode, and it featured the historian Tom Gilbert. podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/m...
Midnight Library of Baseball
Baseball Podcast · Updated Daily · Midnight Library of Baseball is a documentary-style baseball history podcast for listeners who want something deeper, quieter, and more reflective than the typical s...
podcasts.apple.com
For 33 years, McConnell has voted against family and medical leave for working Americans. Then he disappears from the Senate for 92 days and keeps collecting his full paycheck. Apparently, paid leave is only a problem when someone else gets it.
Thinking back to the Kaepernick saga is like peeling back 10 years of the Trump administration to see where we were before. The “stick to sports” culture is part of how we got here. www.npr.org/2026/09/14/n...
10 years after taking a knee, Colin Kaepernick is still waging a 'Perilous Fight'
The former 49ers quarterback created an uproar in 2016 when took a knee during the national anthem to protest police brutality. In The Perilous Fight he explains why he still wants to play football.
npr.org
Trump's foolish trade war with Canada is based on ignorance. It's easy enough for Americans to talk about our president's ignorance, but it's really the tip of the spear of our country's ignorance. I think I'm better than most, but I didn't know about The Patriot War en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patriot...
Patriot War - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
I was looking for stadiums singing of “You’ll Never Walk Alone” and came upon this film yesterday, which I quite enjoyed. youtu.be/TG8pIPRy7pw?...
Why Liverpool Sing You'll Never Walk Alone - The Untold Story #Liverpool #CelticFC #LFC #Football
YouTube video by Zope Media
youtu.be
I’ve been thinking about this, “the least social” of the social media platforms.
Amy Alton Bautz, clown@b3nd3r.bsky.social · 3w agooh my goodness yes Of all the social media platforms I have used, Bluesky is by far the least social I consider my Bluesky feed to be a personally curated Reader's Digest and my own posts pencil scribbles in the margins
#Baseball is weird. This part of my essay attempts some rhetorical alchemy of the swirling themes. The novel #ShoelessJoe, the history of baseball, my father’s dementia, the writing of this long essay: they’re all weird. andrewvarnon.substack.com/p/baseball-i...
