high school award

I’m very pleased to receive the 2012 Alumni Achievement Award of Mt. Vernon High School (Iowa). I graduated way back in 1986 (my father in 1965), and they aren’t even in the same building anymore. But it’s still a nice surprise, and I’ll do everything in my power to return for the ceremony.

Like many or most Americans of an intellectual disposition, I didn’t enjoy my high school years at all, and couldn’t wait to put those years behind me. But with time you start to gain a ripened appreciation of the most formative institutions through which you passed. The fact that virtually all of my father’s side of the family attended the school makes it all the more formative.

new issue of continent

Since it first appeared a year or two ago, continent has offered a number of fascinating articles in each issue.

The latest issue is HERE.

As usual, there are a number of interesting things in this issue, but let me call your attention to two:

1. Duane Rousselle’s review of Levi Bryant’s The Democracy of Objects.

2. A piece by the late Vilém Flusser. Flusser isn’t especially well known in the Anglophone world, but here in Brazil he seems to be talked about constantly, in part due to his long residence in São Paulo. Flusser died in 1991 in an auto accident in what was then Czechoslovakia. Apparently he had just returned to Prague (his native city) for the first time since the war, to attend a conference held in his honor, and the fatal accident occurred on the way home.

lingering in Rio

The Rio de Janeiro incarnation of “The Secret Life of Objects” finished yesterday, and today is a free day simply to enjoy the city (which isn’t hard to do). Approximately half of the non-Brazilian speakers are continuing onward to Salvador tomorrow.