In addition to my academic writing as an RU professor of humanities and sustainability studies, I also regularly write blog essays, newspaper columns, and magazine articles for a general audience. This helps to keep me out of trouble (as deadlines always roll around more quickly than I expect) and inspires me to keep my eyes peeled for interesting tidbits as well as think about the issues of the day, such as they are.

Here in my hometown of Joliet, Illinois, I’ve written a monthly column on environmental, political, and cultural topics for the Opinions page of the Joliet Herald-News, the local daily paper, since 2006. You can read my collected columns for 2010, 2011, and 2012 (as pdf documents) and check out the Joliet section of this blog for expanded versions of these columns since February 2011. For blog essays on a variety of other topics, see the Categories index at right.