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I’m Here Because of Lileks
Okay, not just Lileks, but he is probably my favorite of all the guys on the Ricochet podcast, which I’ve been enjoying for several months now. I finally took the bait and became a member.
I’m a former liberal (just want to get that off my chest from the start). I’ve lived in various regions of the U.S., but I’m Midwest born and bred. I earned a bachelor’s in English in 2009 and published a few short stories online. (Currently working in state government, so you know how that whole writing thing turned out.) Among my interests/likes: philosophy of Alasdair MacIntyre, cycling, Jane Austen novels, knitting, and baking my own granola bars.
What I love about Lileks: During the podcast, he almost always asks the follow-up question I’m asking (but no one can hear).
However, I lately discovered that we differ drastically on the issue of changing our clocks. It’s stupid. I hate it.
Published in General
That’s hilarious. I hope it’s true. Have you written about this experience before?
It’s very true.
I’ve written about my Amish background before. I don’t think I’ve written about DST before.
On Ricochet? If you have a link, I would love to read it.
The most interesting part of his life was when he lived in Elizabethton. Now he’s just some kind of concierge doctor on Hilton Head.
Heh. Now you are into Ricochet’s dirty laundry. Searching this site is, shall we say, difficult. Especially for so prolific a writer as our good Dr. Bastiat:
https://ricochet.com/members/drbastiat/blog/
(:
(Fair warning: you won’t be able to stop if you dig into his œuvre.)
Glad you’re here.
BTW, @malka-davis its customary for new members to pay a special “frat initiation” fee to all long term members as a way of paying it forward and keeping the site going. Expect an email from Nigeria shortly, signed by me, explaining the terms and conditions.
Checkbook at the ready.
Welcome! Lileks is a great reason to be here. I got my English degree in 2000, but it was my second degree and part of a mid-life reassessment. But it was not and still isn’t my career path either. I look forward to reading your posts and interacting with you.
Phil is exactly right. I’ve never been able to find anything on Ricochet with the search feature.
I’ll often get an idea for a post, but then I won’t write it because I think, “Um, I think I may have written something like that before…” And there’s no way for me to find out. And I’m not going to manually scroll through 650 posts to find out. So I skip it.
I use Google to search Ricochet sometimes, and it works ok if I know exactly what I’m looking for.
I’ll see if I can find posts that I’ve written about that era of my life. But to Phil’s point again, I may not be able to find them. I’ll see what I can do.
You did talk about it some here:
https://ricochet.com/815850/loc-with-dr-bastiat/
You mention it in others, such as the one about Sweden or this:
https://ricochet.com/736248/the-lasting-benefits-of-repeated-failure/
And I don’t see why people are always ragging on the search function here. I have no problems.
Thanks Arahant!
I don’t know how many of you are aware that the Sainted James Lileks was actually a doctrinaire, garden-variety liberal- particularly when he worked inside the beltway for the Washington Post. He got tired of that hubris he encountered every day there and missed the bedrock reality of the Midwest and his fellow Fargoites.
When he returned to Minneapolis around 30 years ago (where he had gone to college at my alma mater and could now live just an afternoon’s drive away from his parents in Fargo), he prided himself on being as militant moderate- both sides were too extreme, etc. That was when I first discovered and listened to him on his local Saturday radio show on AM1500. By the end of the 1990’s he was a sensible Gingrich acolyte (self-described when I called his show on day and asked about his drift rightward), and went all the way after 9-11.
His “Back Fence” newspaper column was, for a long time, one of two bearable non-sports things about the StarTribune (which I was delivering daily to 80+ customers when James was in primary school), the other being Kathy Kersten’s weekly column. Kathy was eventually purged as an alleged economy move by wokester editors, and at one point Lileks was also briefly removed from his by-line, but he was too popular for the boycott to be sustained. Fortunately, the Strib owner is actually not a lefty so the editors can’t be as monolithically port-side frisky as they would like. (the paper has no choice but to trend left overall because the city itself is basically the Midwest Seattle/SanFran/Portland subscriber base)
BTW, his books are all fun and I have virtually all of them on my shelves. The only one I didn’t really care about was Mr Obvious. The rest are great, starting with Falling Up The Stairs. the battle against AIL.
~le gasp~
Like in his 20s, not real surprising is it?
Everybody, now, Three, Two, One…
RAAAAMBAAAAL!
Happy days are here again, the sky above is clear again…
Here, here on the English degree. Mine was in 1991 and I wouldn’t trade it for anything. I’ve been a full-time homeschooling mom, a lobbyist, and managed a 50-person department. Now I’m executive at a non-profit and working on an MBA. Welcome!
Thanks for the summary. I too have the books, loved Falling Up, finished Mr. Obvious but didn’t re-read. On the other hand I have gleefully given copies of Interior Desecrations and Regrettable Food to folks at Christmas. They seem to be going out of print, which makes lileks.com that much more valuable.
This is really excellent. And it’s a topic on which I consider myself something of an expert. I’m glad @Arahant found it.
To whom? Not me, although I did skip that phase, having been born sans heart.