Greetings from the University of New Hampshire! If you follow me on LinkedIn, you’ve been seeing me post a lot of pictures of my students holding this sign with the name of their internship site. They are very funny - I tried to get them to post the picture on their own LinkedIn profile, but they didn’t want to do that. Instead, they want me to post their picture and tag them, and then they like to share the picture. Like, my goofy professor made me take this picture, so I’m just putting it out there, it’s not my fault… I’m pretty pleased - as of right now I have 20 of 24 of the students placed and I might, I just might, hit my goal of having them all placed by spring break (which is now in less than two weeks). We’ll see. Some new locations and some old, and I may be traveling farther this year than in the past for at least one, but wherever they go, that’s where I will be headed this summer. As I said in last weekend’s FITW newsletter, creating opportunities for and empowering students, that’s what I love to do.
I’m preparing for a Flourishing in the World interview next week with a Julia Rodriguez, a colleague from the History Department, who teaches a course called Global History of Childhood and Youth. I happened to see a flyer advertising the course, so I reached out to Julia and she has agreed to talk about her course. As part of my prep, I read a book she uses in the course called Huck’s Raft: A History of American Childhood. It’s a fascinating read that puts the social construct of childhood into the context of America from the colonial period to the turn of the millennium. I am really looking forward to our conversation.
On to the links! As usual, willing good for all of you!
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Read
What: NYT, David Foster Wallace, Roger Federer as Religious Experience
Why: I am not a sports fan. I do not follow any sports. After my kids having played soccer for 10’ish years, I am like Ted Lasso: I still don’t understand what “off-sides” means. I don’t have an opposition to it - I just have never followed any. I enjoy going to sports events - we used to go to see the Rampage, San Antonio’s minor league hockey team, and the Missions, San Antonio’s minor league baseball team. I am able to enjoy these games without really following what is going on beyond someone got a puck in the net, that’s good, or someone made a home run. But for the details - I have to ask my wife what’s going on most of the time. I can enjoy minor league games because the games don’t cost much to go to, and it’s a way to spend time with friends and family, have a beer and eat some hotdogs. I can’t really imagine taking out a second mortgage to get good seats at a Red Sox game - and the cost would ruin the fun for me.
So all that by way of introduction to this beautifully written homage to Roger Federer and tennis. I know even less about tennis than I do about baseball or hockey, and yet I found this piece captivating as a commentary on beauty and human endeavor. That has a lot do with the fact that it was written by David Foster Wallace, one of those people where you have to say all three of their names so people know who you are talking about. But he was one of the great writers of recent time. This is the central point from the article:
Beauty is not the goal of competitive sports, but high-level sports are a prime venue for the expression of human beauty. The relation is roughly that of courage to war.
The human beauty we’re talking about here is beauty of a particular type; it might be called kinetic beauty. Its power and appeal are universal. It has nothing to do with sex or cultural norms. What it seems to have to do with, really, is human beings’ reconciliation with the fact of having a body.
You know, I also don’t follow the ballet or classical music. Like sports, any high-level endeavor requires a degree of investment to be able to fully appreciate its beauty. But DFW’s writing let’s you enter into the beauty of tennis because he identifies the transcendent that runs across sport, art, and all the other fields of human striving.
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Watch
What: Massimo Pigliucci, Stoicism as a philosophy for an ordinary life (18 min)
Why: This is one of the better summaries of Stoicism that I have seen. Definitely worth 18 minutes of your time. He spends some time quoting from Epictetus on what Stoics call the “dichotomy of control”:
Some things are within our power, while others are not. Within our power are opinion, motivation, desire, aversion, and in a word, whatever is of our own doing; not within our power are our body, our property, reputation, office, and, in a word, whatever is not of our own doing… If you regard that only that which is your own as being your own (as is indeed the case), no one will ever be able to coerce you, no one will hinder you, you’ll find fault with no one, you’ll accuse no one, you’ll do nothing whatever against your will, you’ll have no enemy, and no one will ever harm you because no harm can affect you.
— Epictetus, Enchiridion, 1.1
Do listen to the whole thing. I admire Stoicism and this philosophy and I will continue to push Stoicism at you.
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Listen
What: Hardly Working with Brent Orrell, What Rural Voters Think: A Conversation with Nick Jacobs (90 min)
Why: This is a pretty wonkish pod, but I think it is worth a listen. Jacobs makes a good argument for the diversity of rural voters, and also how rural voters in our national narrative are misrepresented, both in number, influence, and interests. One thing he points out is there are only a couple of states that actually have a majority rural population (Maine is one).
Another important point he makes is something I have been thinking about since I heard David Goodhart talk about his book, The Road to Somewhere: The Populist Revolt and the Future of Politics. Goodhart makes the claim that there are two classes in America (and other developed countries): the somewheres and the anywheres. Anywheres are represented by a highly educated, mobile elite who are willing to move anywhere to pursue their work and dreams. Somewheres tend to be blue collar or working class who are anchored to a particular place by obligations to family and a feeling of identity with a particular place. They are the people who get left behind when the mills and factories close. Chris Arnade’s Dignity: Seeking Respect in Back Row America is an excellent pictorial document of this fact. Jacobs makes a similar argument about people who identify as rural: they identify closely with a place in a way that most urban voters do not.