Eleanor Arnason

Column:

Facts and Fictions

workaround

Cultural hoo haw: When is borrowing acceptable? And when is it not?

By Eleanor Arnason, Facts and Fictions

The longer I thought about it, the more I wondered, "How does one distinguish between borrowing/sharing/influencing and appropriation? "Appropriation" means (among other things) taking without permission. But who can give permission for a culture? All at once I think of Disney protecting its copyrights and trademarks.MORE »

Culture and its uses

By Eleanor Arnason, Facts and Fictions

I thought I had a brilliant insight into cultural appropriation yesterday after Minicon. But Patrick says it is not brilliant and not an insight. Ah well.MORE »

Global warming and the rich: Are they thinking short-term, or not at all?

By Eleanor Arnason, Facts and Fictions

I have this bad habit of surfing the Internet in the morning, reading news and economics. Today's depressing information is from Scientific American: global warming may have reached the point of being irreversible.MORE »

Thor

By Eleanor Arnason, Facts and Fictions

Switching to a more useful topic than MFAs in Creative Writing, I want to write about the move Thor. I just saw it for the fifth or sixth time. I really like it. Why? It's just another silly Marvel superhero movie.
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Barbara Jensen, class and language

By Eleanor Arnason, Facts and Fictions

I read one of Barb Jensen's essays online, after posting at Crooked Timber. Barb is a psychologist who writes about the different ways working class people and professional middle class people use language. This is from her essay, talking about the "condensed" way working people talk:MORE »

Thinking about Occupy

By Eleanor Arnason, Facts and Fictions

I have been trying to work out my response to Occupy. Of course, I am in favor of it. But what else? What is my analysis?
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Occupy, part two

By Eleanor Arnason, Facts and Fictions

I had an appointment in Minneapolis yesterday. On my way back, I stopped at Occupy Minnesota to see if they were still there. They were and needed coffee. So I bought a couple of "canteens" -- cardboard boxes full of coffee -- at the nearest coffee shop and brought them back, along with a dozen cookies. Buying cookies one by one from a coffee shop is expesnsive.MORE »

Occupy

By Eleanor Arnason, Facts and Fictions

The police have cleared Zuccotti Park. They have done the same in other American cities. We will see what happens next.

Patrick says this is what the Minneapolis police have done to homeless camps for years. When they find one, they destroy it. Belongings are wrecked or taken away. When people come back to their home, they discover they -- who had so little -- have nothing now.
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OWS - Facebook notes

By Eleanor Arnason, Facts and Fictions

I went to the Occupy Minnesota demonstration Friday morning. When I was there, it was several hundred nice Minnesota people drinking coffee and chatting. Later on, apparently the group decided to march from the City-County Building to the Federal Bank Building and back. One guy told me he was planning to spend the night.
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Radical history

By Eleanor Arnason, Facts and Fictions

Note on all that follows: the word "radical" comes from the Latin "radix" or "root." Radical change is change at the root. Radical history is a history of roots: the stuff at the bottom that anchors and feeds everything else.
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