Category Archives: politics

The Thaw

personal, politics, teaching 2021.03.08 Sean Shannon Leave a comment

Although last month’s polar vortex wasn’t as difficult to get through as the spell of beyond-frigid weather we had here a couple of years ago, having to deal with a prolonged period of super-cold temperatures was still incredibly difficult. What makes matters worse is that because of the pandemic, I didn’t have to leave my apartment at all during that time, so the cold weather really wasn’t a burden to me on a practical level. Psychologically, though, I couldn’t wait for the polar vortex to…

The Devil: Himself

personal, politics, rhetoric, teaching 2021.02.22 Sean Shannon Leave a comment

I was part of that generation of young people who arguably got to experience Bill Cosby at the best possible time; Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids was still in reruns when I was in my earliest years, and the first years of The Cosby Show started right when I got to watch prime time television on a regular basis. My parents already owned a couple of Cosby’s comedy albums on vinyl, and I kept picking up more of them on cassette tape when I…

(Cello) Blue

music, personal, politics 2021.01.11 Sean Shannon Leave a comment

I’ve been struggling to articulate a path forward from this past Wednesday’s events since I started watching the live footage coming from inside the Capitol building on television that afternoon. (I started typing “struggling to make sense of” the events, but that isn’t true because I know exactly how we got to that point as a nation.) This past Sunday night, as I was listening to Music from the Hearts of Space on my hometown public radio station, I still didn’t know what I was…

Fail Points

politics, teaching 2020.12.14 Sean Shannon Leave a comment

Electoral College in the 2020 presidential election (Ballotpedia) The more byzantine machinations of how America’s systems of governance work can be fascinating, if you’re into that sort of thing. Over the past twenty years, though, everything from the Florida recount after the 2000 presidential election, to the large numbers of faithless electors who cast votes they weren’t supposed to cast when the Electoral College met four years ago, has given many Americans far too much of an education about those mechanisms than they ever would…

No More Balls to the Face

politics, rhetoric, teaching 2020.12.07 Sean Shannon Leave a comment

[The following blog contains mentions of bullying and suicide.] Free college is a ‘socialist takeover of higher education’ and student debt cancellation is ‘wrong,’ Betsy DeVos says (MarketWatch via MSN) I’ve never been inside of a ball pit. By the time I first heard of ball pits, I was already outside of what most people would consider their target age group, and I don’t think I even knew the location of any ball pits in Toledo until after I turned eighteen. This used to make…