Democratic Vistas

I am a professor and teach courses in composition, rhetorical theory, composition theory, and creative nonfiction. My most recent publication is Some of the Words Are Theirs: A Memoir of an Alcoholic Family, which is available on Amazon.com.

I started this blog in 2011. I had some time to travel around the country and blog about what I found. That year marked the 50th anniversary of John Steinbeck’s trip around American with Charley, his poodle. Like Steinbeck, I wanted to “check the pulse” of America. I wanted to see how the American people and this grand experiment (democracy) were doing.

I recently revived the blog to write about a number of aspects of American culture–politics, music, literature, etc. So, I will be bouncing around from topic to topic, basically writing about what captures my attention.

I took the photo on the banner of this blog from the “Big Dam Bridge” in Little Rock, where I now live. The bridge is the longest pedestrian and bicycle bridge in the world. In the summer, I try to schedule my evening bike rides so I am crossing the bridge at sunset.  The photograph looks west, down the Arkansas river, which was once an important route to the western territories.

The title for the blog comes from Walt Whitman’s book about how the American people can one day fully realize the ideals of democracy.