Footprints in the Dust

Explore with me a variety of topics ranging from urbanization, human agency in changing our world, geoscience marvels, reflections on American political madness, life stories, and many additional fruits of intellectual curiosity leavened with a modicum of humor.

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Monday, September 28, 2020

What Conservatives Believe

The well-known website, Wikipedia, defines conservatism as: . . . a political and social philosophy promoting traditional social institu...

Tuesday, August 4, 2020

Reflection on John Lewis

Emmett Till was my George Floyd. He was my Rayshard Brooks, Sandra Bland, and Breonna Taylor. He was 14 when he was killed, and I was only 1...

Tuesday, June 23, 2020

Why I’m Not Capitalizing the “b” in black *

In the past few days, we have been treated to dozens of news media announcing that starting now and in their future publications the word “b...

Tuesday, June 9, 2020

All Lives Matter

All Lives Matter. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard that mantra since Michael Brown’s killing. When you do hear it it’s typically...

Sunday, June 7, 2020

What Do White Parents Tell Their Children?

On Sunday morning, June 7, 2020, U.S. Attorney General William Barr stated on a national TV news program that he does not believe that th...

Friday, June 5, 2020

On Protesting, Looting, and Violence

Some years ago, a group of angry Massachusetts residents decided to raid several American transporters because of perceived socioeconomic i...

Wednesday, June 3, 2020

NEWS FLASH

A recent national poll found that 44 percent of respondents who self-identified as Republicans believe that Bill Gates was plotting to use ...

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About Me

SOB (Sweet Old Bob): Chesterfield, MO, United States; This blog consists of the musings of a guy who has spent the greater majority of his professional career as a geographer in the real, versus academic, world as an urban planner. It is meant to give hope to young geographers that productive life can be found outside academia. By way of full disclosure, my BS, MA, and PhD are in geography. For the PhD, I had mentors who were urban and land use/land cover geographers, which is one reason I gravitated to urban planning after I left academia (having taught full-time for seven years after finishing the doctoral course work). The posts that appear on this blog are in no particular order and usually do not discuss details of projects on which I worked. But they are written by a geographer whose intellectual foundation was in liberal arts education that liberated my mind in the very best way. My sense and understanding of the world was and remains based on three wonderful influences: liberalism, geography, and my life-long love of geology. BTW, the paintings shown on this blog are my creations.

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