Regions of the Mind
Geitner Simmons is an editorial writer with the Omaha World-Herald. In his own very eloquent words, he's also a "Midwesterner, a Southerner, a husband, a father, a son. And always a student." The title of blogger can be added to that list as well because Regions of the Mind is where he posts every Tuesday. His beat covers "history, U.S. regionalism, foreign policy, politics, life." In this short example we see the quality of his writing while learning about a truly fascinating sliver of US social history:
"While the Homestead Act is 1862, its social impact was still being felt almost a century later when Alaska became a state. Looking backwards, so to speak, the founding fathers and mothers realized that in Alaska 'land' had a cash value as a mechanism of solving social problems. Because of Alaska's boom-to-bust economy, our population followed the same pattern. One of the most expensive negative consequences of the ebb and flow of population was the fate of the mentally ill. They came with the boom and when the bust came, they remained where they ran out of money. This forced the community when they 'settled' financially responsible for them. To solve this territory-wide problem, the Alaska Constitutional Convention established a land grant system called the Mental Health Lands. Today, mental health issues in Alaska are constitutionally funded through the one resource which Alaska had plenty of at statehood: land."
Geitner Simmons there. A week ago he sent me an e-mail saying "I appreciate the quality sites and writers you point to at your weblog, and I have an impressive blog to recommend to you." Tomorrow, here on Rainy Day, you can meet this impressive blogger whose resume includes stints as a phonebook proof-reader and chauffeur to a Hollywood star, and who has taught at the Harvard Business School. He says things such as, "The Left believes in the liberties of the cultural domain, and is suspicious of the liberties of the economic domain. The Right believes in the liberties of the economic domain, and is suspicious of the liberties of the cultural domain. I believe in both liberties, but if you force me to choose, and the US party system does, then I will go with the Right." One of his reasons: "commerce must be robust and unconstrained (which in Canada it distinctly is not; no important innovations tend to come from a Margaret Atwood reading circle)." Love that last bit, I do. More tomorrow.
