Robert Philen's Blog

I just read a cool science news story from Natural History magazine by Robert R. Dunn: "A head in the clouds: do the microorganisms that circulate in the atmosphere get there by chance or by cont...

http://robertphilen.blogspot.com/2009/08/cloud-microbes.html

I’ve been thinking about cover tunes. Some of my favorite versions of songs are cover versions. The versions of cover songs I tend to dislike are those that are completely expected, singers or ...

http://robertphilen.blogspot.com/2009/08/cover-tunes.html

Last night I watched Renaissance, an animated film from 2006. It’s one of the more visually striking films I’ve seen in a while, and worth taking a look at for that reason alone. As I watched...

http://robertphilen.blogspot.com/2009/06/renaissance.html

Both on this blog and on “Reginald Shepherd’s Blog” (which I’ve been maintaining since his death), I recently posted a piece called “Reginald and the Muses” (Follow this link for the...

http://robertphilen.blogspot.com/2009/04/thoughts-on-allusion-quotation-remixing.html

In the few months since Reginald’s death, I’ve revisited and reread most all of his writing, poetry and prose, a time or two, mostly as a way of coping with his loss and staying in touch with...

http://robertphilen.blogspot.com/2009/02/reginald-and-muses.html

I miss Reginald’s passion and joy in living. Despite the hard life he had (see Hard Knocks Life: Things I Miss, 7 ), Reginald loved life like no other person I’ve known. A number of people w...

http://robertphilen.blogspot.com/2009/01/things-i-miss-8.html

Reginald had a hard time going through this world – this world he didn’t survive, to echo a line from one of his poems. I’m not just referring to the more apparent biographic facts of his ...

http://robertphilen.blogspot.com/2009/01/hard-knocks-life-things-i-miss-7.html

Reginald's essay collection, Orpheus in the Bronx: Essays on Identity, Politics, and the Freedom of Poetry, has just been named as a finalist for the award in criticism by the National Book Criti...

http://robertphilen.blogspot.com/2009/01/national-book-critics-award-finalists.html

Today is a good day. It’s also a hard day for me, and I suspect for many others. This past Thanksgiving and Christmas were tough holidays for me, being the first holiday season without my Regi...

http://robertphilen.blogspot.com/2009/01/bittersweet-happy-day.html

I’ve long had mixed feelings about disco. Much of it’s great music that’s fun, upbeat, and uplifting, but I typically have a bittersweet feeling whenever I listen to disco, as it tends to e...

http://robertphilen.blogspot.com/2008/11/disco-gets-me-down-things-i-miss-6.html

I miss Reginald’s physical presence: his physical touch as lover; holding hands as we watched TV, drove down the road, or in a thousand other settings; the feel of his short cropped hair on my ...

http://robertphilen.blogspot.com/2008/10/things-i-miss-5.html

I miss Reginald’s sleeping. Reginald didn’t snore loudly, at least not after he had a minor surgery several years ago to correct a deviated septum, but he made precious little snore-sounds, ...

http://robertphilen.blogspot.com/2008/10/things-i-miss-4.html

It’s now been a month since my dear Reginald died, and the loss has only gotten harder as the reality of his absence and the realization that I’ll never see him again in this life has begun t...

http://robertphilen.blogspot.com/2008/10/things-i-miss-3.html

I miss caring for and tending to Reginald. I miss cooking for him when he could keep some food down – always iffy, since he was on chemotherapy from last December through April, and on multipl...

http://robertphilen.blogspot.com/2008/09/things-i-miss-2.html

It’s been a bit over two weeks since my dear Reginald passed. It hasn’t fully sunk in, I don’t think. I know he’s gone, but I find myself several times a day thinking things like, “I’...

http://robertphilen.blogspot.com/2008/09/things-i-miss.html

Reginald Shepherd, who was my partner, best friend, lover, confidante, and so much more, died this past week on September 10 after a fight with cancer. The following is a short piece about Regina...

http://robertphilen.blogspot.com/2008/09/reginald-shepherd-1963-2008.html

I’ve been thinking quite a bit lately about the fragility of life (for pretty straightforward reasons – see my previous post). I’ve also been thinking a bit about the sheer improbability of...

http://robertphilen.blogspot.com/2008/06/improbability-of-being-alive.html

I’ve been a bit preoccupied lately. In mid-April, my partner, Reginald Shepherd, suffered a serious, nearly fatal, medical crisis. For reasons still unknown, a perforation opened in his small ...

http://robertphilen.blogspot.com/2008/06/where-ive-been.html

In my previous post (“Some Thoughts on Ethnography” ), I mentioned having recently reviewed the various essays in Writing Culture, including that by Mary Louise Pratt, while preparing for a d...

http://robertphilen.blogspot.com/2008/04/boring-ethnography.html

I recently read Robert Lowie’s The German People. It’s an ethnography of sorts of German culture, at least in the sense that it’s a “writing of culture” (more on this text as ethnograph...

http://robertphilen.blogspot.com/2008/04/some-thoughts-on-ethnography.html

I recently read a short collection of essays by and interviews with the Eqbal Ahmad, Terrorism: Theirs and Ours. In the title piece, “Terrorism: Theirs and Ours,” I read Ahmad as making two ...

http://robertphilen.blogspot.com/2008/03/eqbal-ahmad-and-terrorism.html

1. Jane Hurd, my grandmother, whom I always called Nana, passed away a few months ago. She died after a battle with throat cancer, about which I’ll only say that as much pain as she did suffer...

http://robertphilen.blogspot.com/2008/03/jane-hurd-remembrance.html

Like a lot of people, I worry a good deal about what we humans are doing to the planet, by which I really mean I worry a good deal about what we’re doing to life and the biosphere. Between anth...

http://robertphilen.blogspot.com/2008/03/tips-on-destroying-world.html

I initially wrote the following, in very slightly different form, as a clarifying comment on my recent post A Democracy of Creation and Taste (But Not Quality). It's long enough, and I put enoug...

http://robertphilen.blogspot.com/2008/03/more-on-taste-and-quality-in-art.html

A few months ago at a conference, I was involved in a conversation with a few other scholars and the topic of men and feminism came up. One individual (who happened to be female) argued that men ...

http://robertphilen.blogspot.com/2008/03/on-why-pro-feminist-men-are-not.html