A fine, fine re-examination of a lot of the tenets of what author Thomas Michael Power and others refer to as "folk economics" and how folks' clinging to them in spite of all evidence and reason does more harm than good to economic development efforts is in my bookbag tonight. Lost Landscapes, Failed Economies: The Search for a Value of Place is an undeniably cool book (maybe not as sexy as Freakonomics but actually more challenging to a lot of shibboleths), but it's kind of making me tired - Power is preaching here to the screwball tenor section of the choir. I already know that the notion that small rural communities cannot survive without their 19th century extractive industrial employers is fallacious, and have the psychic scars from a few years' service in municipal government and chamber of commerce work to prove it. Which is probably why I'm having trouble keeping on task with this book, engaging though it is.
I've also still got a book by and a book about Aby Warburg with me as discussed in my previous post, but both of those volumes are of imposing physical size and heft and there's not much room for them at my work station (for I am at work; it's just a nice, slow night and my employer is one who doesn't mind if we read on the job as long as nothing else gets neglected. Graveyard shift. Ahh.). Plus, well...
I'm longing to lose myself in a simple, fun story. I'm craving fiction like my colleagues crave chocolate. Perhaps I should take this energy and start writing some -- there is ample scratch paper about after all, and this experiment of mine has definitely left me brimming with ideas.
But what I really, really want right now is a nice "shaggy shogguth" story...
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