Alienation, autonomy, and ideology
A little over a month ago, I told readers about my foot injury. Taking a bad step on the stairs at home, I fractured the talus and navicular bones in my right foot.
As I get ready for my follow up appointment in about a week with the orthopedics folks, I wanted to send along a brief update. It’s mostly good news.
After a nearly 11 year absence, I jumped back into the classroom in the spring 2026 semester. I taught the honors section of Intro to Philosophy at the University of Iowa, spending hours reworking my syllabus and retooling the course for what, at least in my mind, students might find more useful in 2026 than they did in 2015.
A few readers probably noticed this, given that I had to take a bit more time off from writing than usual. And on that note, I’ll thank regular readers for their patience. I know that post frequency moved a little closer to 3-4 posts per month rather than the usual 5 or 6.
Here are a few thoughts on how it went.
Seeking out a mid-morning snack, I descended the stairs with my laptop opened and propped on my right hand. I was watching a YouTube video as I worked the stairs. As I reached the third step, I stretched my right foot a bit too far, overstepping the fourth and landing badly on the fifth.
Uh-oh.
Had I landed cleanly, it would’ve been no problem at all. In fact, I’ve done that a dozen or more times with no discernible issue. But this time, my luck ran out. My right foot turned inward as I landed, tucking awkwardly into the wooden step on our 100 year old American Foursquare home.
As I brought my weight down on the foot, I knew right away something had gone wrong. My body stumbled forward, and I miraculously managed to brace my body and keep the laptop in my right hand. This prevented both my body and my laptop from tumbling two steps below onto the landing at the middle of the staircase.
But my right foot wasn’t so lucky. It took no more than a couple of seconds before I felt a pain radiating through the foot. Something had gone wrong.
After last week’s post on the changes in Iowa City, I wanted to compare Iowa City to another college town. And since I used to live in Bloomington, Indiana, that’s my choice!
When I moved to Iowa City (from Bloomington) in August 2007, I saw Iowa City as a bit of a step down. Bloomington felt like a slightly larger city with a slightly larger university in a slightly larger state. I thought I would spend a few years in Iowa City before moving on to a larger city.
On top of this, I saw Bloomington through rose-colored lenses. Hailing from the middle of nowhere in rural southern Indiana, Bloomington stood out to me as an oasis in a barren wasteland. Surely Iowa City couldn’t match any of that.
But 20 years later, I’ve reconsidered my views on all of this. Maybe Bloomington isn’t quite the place I saw as an 18 year old. And perhaps Iowa City can more than hold its own.
I moved to the purple state of Iowa in 2007. It had a Democratic governor and an ideologically diverse state legislature and political discourse. And it soon became the launching pad for the presidential campaign of Barack Obama, our first black president.
Iowa was never perfect. My politics always sat well to the left of anyone who held office in 2007. But having moved here from Indiana, I found it a breath of fresh air. Compared to Indiana’s four decade long decline into hard conservatism, Iowa practically felt like California.
It doesn’t feel like California now. Looking back two decades later, I have to ask: what happened?
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