Claas will go to Fergus now,
And pierce the deep wood’s — make that prairie’s — shade,
And interview the local bores.
Young man, approach this mindless sow
Make buddies with that cretin maid,
And brood on fact and truth no more.
And no more turn aside and brood
Upon this country’s mystery;
For Fergus is your mason jar,
Containing all our kinfolk rude
And all our white supremacy
And all our politics bizarre.
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Dr. Bernard Carroll, known as the "conscience of psychiatry," contributed to various blogs, including Margaret Soltan's University Diaries, for which he sometimes wrote limericks under the name Adam.
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George Washington University English professor Margaret Soltan writes a blog called University Diaries, in which she decries the Twilight Zone-ish state our holy land’s institutes of higher ed find themselves in these days.
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It’s [UD's] intellectual honesty that makes her blog required reading.
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There's always something delightful and thought intriguing to be found at Margaret Soltan's no-holds-barred, firebrand tinged blog about university life.
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You can get your RDA of academic liars, cheats, and greedy frauds at University Diaries. All disciplines, plus athletics.
truffula, commenting at Historiann
Margaret Soltan at University Diaries blogs superbly and tirelessly about [university sports] corruption.
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University Diaries. Hosted by Margaret Soltan, professor of English at George Washington University. Boy is she pissed — mostly about athletics and funding, the usual scandals — but also about distance learning and diploma mills. She likes poems too. And she sings.
Dissent: The Blog
[UD belittles] Mrs. Palin's degree in communications from the University of Idaho...
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Professor Margaret Soltan, blogging at University Diaries... provide[s] an important voice that challenges the status quo.
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[University Diaries offers] the kind of attention to detail in the use of language that makes reading worthwhile.
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Margaret Soltan's ire is a national treasure.
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The irrepressibly to-the-point Margaret Soltan...
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Margaret Soltan, whose blog lords it over the rest of ours like a benevolent tyrant...
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Margaret Soltan is no fan of college sports and her diatribes on the subject can be condescending and annoying. But she makes a good point here...
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From Margaret Soltan's excellent coverage of the Bernard Madoff scandal comes this tip...
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University Diaries offers a long-running, focused, and extremely effective critique of the university as we know it.
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The inimitable Margaret Soltan is, as usual, worth reading. ...
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I awake this morning to find that the excellent Margaret Soltan has linked here and thereby singlehandedly given [this blog] its heaviest traffic...
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As Margaret Soltan, one of the best academic bloggers, points out, pressure is mounting ...
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Many of us bloggers worry that we don’t post enough to keep people’s interest: Margaret Soltan posts every day, and I more or less thought she was the gold standard.
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University Diaries by Margaret Soltan is one of the best windows onto US university life that I know.
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If deity were an elected office, I would quit my job to get her on the ballot.
Notes of a Neophyte
December 21st, 2018 at 12:54PM
Yes, but The Narrative …
I think I learned more about Fergus Falls in a visit of about two hours a year ago than this supposed journalist did.
Enjoy the Festive Season.
December 21st, 2018 at 1:09PM
Stephen: I’m envious that you were able to visit; the whole thing makes me want to go there and check it out. Happy holidays to you too.
December 22nd, 2018 at 1:35AM
Heck, Bill Polley, who is a former econ blogger and current deputy dean at Western Illinois, is from near there, and he once had an internship at the Otter Tail Power Company, presumably the owner of the generating station the Spiegelfehler described.
The Fergus Falls visit rated a photo essay on my site, September 2017.
December 22nd, 2018 at 4:36PM
The New Republic says, “Meh, never let facts get in da way of a good story, right Steve?”
December 22nd, 2018 at 8:07PM
Charlie: Yes – I thought of him too.
December 23rd, 2018 at 5:19PM
Ah, but if this poseur had simply ventured a few miles out of town, to the threshing bee in Dalton for the hot dish dinner prepared by the local Lutheran church, and for the deer rifles being traded at the swap meet, he might have had something to rile up the urbane types.
December 23rd, 2018 at 6:05PM
Stephen: Now I REALLY want to visit.
December 23rd, 2018 at 10:46PM
The threshing bee usually takes place the weekend after Labor Day, point your search engine at “Lake Region Pioneer Threshermen’s Association” for details. If you and Mr UD head there by way of Illinois, give a shout-out.
Oh, and while I was there, in addition to discovering the power company general offices and the railway things, there was a pretty well stocked used book store on the main street.
December 24th, 2018 at 2:20PM
I’m a little surprised that Relotius (or the famed Der Spiegel fact-checkers) has not invoked the “fake, but accurate” defense.
I am afraid, SK, that certain events such as the inevitable tractor pulls that go along with threshing festivals are not suitable for coastal sophisticates. They risk having their urbanity circuits blown out.
December 24th, 2018 at 3:37PM
tp: There was no tractor pull at the Lake Region Pioneer Threshermen’s Association. Two steam traction engines collaborating to spin a sawmill, yes. Deer rifles at the swap meet, yes. Hot dish dinner prepared by the Lutheran church, yes. Calling the mid-day meal dinner would probably blow a few urbanity circuits, yes. Isn’t that how subverting dominant paradigms works?
December 27th, 2018 at 8:12AM
No tractor pull!!?? What the hell is The Flyover coming to?
The dinner vs. supper distinction mostly seems generational these days. To my rural grandparents’ generation, “dinner” was uniformly used for the mid-day meal and “supper” for one in the early evening, but the distinction seems to have fallen out of use even for my generation. “Supper” seems to be falling out of use. The big mid-day meal itself likewise is vanishing.
December 27th, 2018 at 11:36AM
tp: Tractor pulls are a county fair thing, not a threshing bee thing. That noted, county fairs aren’t what they used to be, what with feedlots for the livestock and fields committed in advance to a single crop for a single buyer, often an ethanol brewer.
Thus, the 4-H displays at some county fairs are more about science projects than about raising cattle. All the same, the meal schedule for the 4-H-ers at the Minnesota State Fair had a midday dinner and an evening supper.
It’s more of a regional thing, there are still bean suppers in Maine, as well as the term being in use in God’s Country. But yes, big mid-day meals (dinner once referring to the biggest meal of the day) have gone out of fashion. With air-conditioned tractors fitted with GPS, you might as well have a couple of sub sandwiches, oops, sorry, that’s “hoagies” for you coasties, and a thermos of lemonade in the cooler and eat while the autopilot harrows the rows.
December 31st, 2018 at 1:05PM
SK, I promise you that in the parts of the Midwest I hail from, tractor pulls (esp. “antique” tractor pulls, where “antique” is usually >1920 and <1980) are still big, not only at county fairs, but even annual town fairs. Inevitably, there are now hard-core, quasi-professional tractor pullers, which were definitely not a thing when I was a kid.
January 2nd, 2019 at 11:35AM
We’re talking about two different kinds of events. County fairs, with the carnival rides, multiple varieties of funnel cakes, livestock shows, and a grandstand suitable for harness racing and demolition derbies also host tractor pulls, including both the vintage gasoline tractors (1960-1980 sounds about right) and the unlimited classes, which have been with us for some time. The sports cartoon “Tank McNamara” once lampooned the unlimited class when an entrant showed up with a Space Shuttle.
The Dalton event is a threshing bee, where the local steam power club demonstrates its stationary engines, and the hobbyists bring their mobile stationary engines, or steam traction engines, which might be able to pull a husk-saw or threshing machine from one site to another but were generally not robust enough to pull a plow. Generally, if people question model railroaders about their obsession, my response is to note that there are people who collect and restore the traction engines, not a cheap hobby at all.
The food service at the threshing bees is generally different, with local caterers or churches doing most of the work, the food trucks are off at the county fairs dealing in the funnel cakes!
Generally, the county fairs are separate from the threshing bees. The only exception I can think of is that the Freeport, Illinois steam power club’s museum is hard by the county fairgrounds, and the county fair and the threshing bee run concurrently. As that fairground is close enough to Wisconsin, you can even get a proper cream puff! There might be other such paired shows that haven’t come to my attention yet.