Category: Career

Review | The View From Flyover Country: Dispatches from the Forgotten America by Sarah Kendzior

Richard William Lawrence2 Comments

The View from Flyover Country: Dispatches from the Forgotten AmericaThe View from Flyover Country: Dispatches from the Forgotten America by Sarah Kendzior

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

“…and in the eyes of the people there is the failure; and in the eyes of the hungry there is a growing wrath. In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage.”
― John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath

This book is a collection of essays written between 2012 and 2014 covering subjects including the collapse of the US economy, the loss of opportunities, the shrinking middle class, and the transformation of higher education into a debt trap by the super rich. While the book is focused mainly on ‘flyover country’ also called the mid-west or the ‘rust belt’ it will also ring true with those in such places as Williamsburg and Greenpoint Brooklyn, where gentrification has pushed out middle class families some of which had lived there for generations. The author successfully predicted the election of Donald Trump and each essay describes the angst that motivated disillusioned voters to cast their vote for him. To be sure, his populist rhetoric set fire to the simmering anger you could easily see at his rallies but populism is a plant that can only grow in a specific type of soil. These essays describe the soil in which his message took hold.

View all my reviews

The Reinvented Life | A New Chapter

Richard William Lawrence1 Comment

Last Monday I received an email letting me know that my application to be a writer for Secular Nation Magazine had been accepted.  This was my first “official” writing job and the start of another segue into something I am extremely passionate about.   At a time when most people’s careers are at the ‘tray tables and seat backs are in the upright position in preparation for landing’ point I am getting ready to take off into a new adventure.  I couldn’t be more thrilled.

I couldn’t ask for a better forum to start out at than Secular Nation Magazine.  The overall focus of the magazine, as the title alludes to, is to be a voice for the secular community and I am privileged to be a small part of it. The executive editors let the writers determine the direction and content of the magazine as we move forward which allows everyone the freedom to write on precisely those subjects they are most passionate about.

Most important to me will be my audience which I tend to divide into two parts.  One part is the people who are reading this and the articles to come over the next few months and years.  I hope I can inspire those like minded individuals to fight for the secular values this country was founded on and push back against the rising tide of religious extremism that is looking to hijack this country and turn it into a middle eastern theocracy with them, of course, occupying the position of ‘theo’.

The other part of my audience is, by definition, far smaller than the first part though they are both of equal importance to me.  It also differs from the first part in that it has yet to be born.  I have made it a point that when I write I am writing to my great, great, great, grandchildren.

I have on my bookshelves books from my great grandparents, my grandparents and my parents.  As I grew older and my reading habits became more sophisticated the books began to paint a picture of their owners and was able to gain an insight, however limited, of the relative who owned it; who they were, what were their thoughts, what were they passionate about intellectually.  Some of the books had notes scribbled in the margins and finding them I could imagine how a prospector felt when he spotted a gold nugget in his pan.  I want to do one step better and allow them to see who I was, what I was passionate about and my thoughts on the issues that were important to me. The best way for me to do that is to write.  Now, I have the opportunity and forum to do just that.