These pieces were not written by the late British poet, Ken Smith (1938-2003), nor the other Ken Smiths who make bass guitars, study marine biology, sell cars, teach card counting, paint war scenes in oils, guide bear hunters in Idaho, teach forest management, study immunology, do war reporting, sell real estate, photograph nature, teach cryptology, provide legal counsel to the gay and lesbian community, realign the spines of athletes, listen for seismic faults in the Sierra Nevadas, operate a 4-axis milling machine, work for sustainable development in Alberta, play blackjack, or criticize Junk English. Nor were the pieces written by the Ken Smith who is “the Elvis Costello of Landscape Architecture” nor the one who serves in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives nor the one who hit a home run for the Atlanta Braves in 1983. I only wish.
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Are there still Americans?
My two favorite reasons for honoring the U. S. Constitution are: 1) the Founders got some things right and 2) they built a method for improving the document into the document: a method for amending the constitution. I don't have any interest in honoring the Constitution because the Founders were god-like figures who must not…
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Urgent times, plain speech
Sometime after the war, Albert Camus was invited to speak at a conference about religion. He mentioned that during those terrible years it would have been very good to hear the Pope condemn the Nazis. Any respected voice at a time like that would have at least been of some solace, if nothing else. Then,…
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Powerful people love when this happens
Not just informed, involved.
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Average political speech will kill us
The average political speech, the average op-ed, the average social media post, seeks a nod of agreement and maybe a trip to the voting booth. These average speeches and bits of writing don't care about building organized activism. The foundation of their philosophy is that "we insiders, having been elected, will take care of everything.…
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Semaphore is not broadcasting
Our messaging tools mostly don’t encourage social organization at either end of the chain of communication.
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Tearing it all down
Tearing things down takes little time at all. Building something worthy often takes a lifetime, and sometimes saves many a life.
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Don’t go it alone
There comes a time when every activist movement can no longer sustain itself on the energy it has accumulated so far. It can't get its voice out far enough to do the necessary work. It can't sustain its voice long enough without exhaustion. It can't maintain its morale and confidence in the isolation of its…
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The Power of the Powerless, section 1
And most important of all, Havel begins to ask about the real power of these powerless citizens.
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Get back to where you once belonged
You hear this idea sometimes: Don't waste a crisis. That might mean some very different things, more than just the first bullet point below: Building a coalition committed to kicking out the bums and getting America back to what it was in, say, 2014. Same coalition, aimed at ejecting the dangerous ones and getting America…
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Power’s self-reinforcing loops
Someone was complaining about a place in the Caribbean, saying, essentially, that people there had grown accustomed to distant, powerful others providing substantially for their local needs. It wasn't a subtle moment in the conversation, and with someone I'd just met I decided not to press for more of the reasoning — if any. I…