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When a student reached out to an adjunct professor at Colorado State University to say that he would be turning an assignment late because he couldn't deal with the election results this past Tuesday, the professor didn't respond in the way he probably expected. The message, captured and sent exclusively to Independent Journal Review, is found here: The student begins, “...I just wanted to let you know why I haven't posted yet this week. The election of the most evil hateful person to ever run for president has me very upset and I need time to process it all and...

Since it is the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of Jack Kerouac's ground-breaking book, "On The Road," many are using the occasion to reminisce about the author. However, Tom Hayden is using this anniversary as a way to lament in the Huffington Post over the fact that Kerouac was too much of an iconoclast to buy into his collectivist leftwing agenda: Having set the stage for the '60s, Kerouac seems to have gone missing which at first I thought odd, but it made perfect sense because he defined himself as a loner on the margins. Suddenly confronted with the possibility...

Not long ago, I tried to have a suit made of gray flannel, but was told that, being a thick and heavy cloth, flannel was no longer in demand. Buildings are so well-heated these days, said the tailor, that flannel is uncomfortable to wear in them. Here was an indisputable consequence of global warming. My attitude to gray flannel has changed over the years. Since my first school uniform was of that material, I associated it for a long time with immaturity and a position of subordination to others. Then, as a young doctor, I came under the spell of...

The novel that launched the Beats, the hippies and designer jeans turns 50. But this legendary 'joyride' is actually the saddest book you'll ever read—even with God on every page. Jack Kerouac's "On The Road" gets the full 50th anniversary treatment next month, and both cheerleaders and hand-wringers acknowledge that it radically changed American culture—somehow or other. True, the National Quiet Desperation Index has only risen since 1957, and if the book's exaltation of junker cars and diner food had really taken hold, we'd have fewer SUVs and fast-food franchises. But "On the Road" showed, and continues to show, generations...

SAN FRANCISCO -- You could be anything you wanted to be in the Beat movement. This year is the 50th anniversary of the publication of Jack Kerouac's On the Road, in which he wrote how he stayed in San Francisco for a week and had the "beatest" time of his life. San Francisco is still a good place for that. The Beat Museum opened last fall in the North Beach neighborhood of San Francisco. It honors the Beat creed of tolerance, inclusiveness and having the be-all to follow your dreams. That's how remnants of the Sputnik I satellite landed last...

Here’s How the Church of the Future is Experimenting in the Cathedral of MilanWith video installations, electronic music, and abstract art. With Lenten readings from Oscar Wilde and Jack Kerouac. With the pulpit given over to nonbelievers. All this in the great diocese whose patrons are Saint Ambrose and Saint Charles BorromeoROMA, June 13, 2006 – One of the key phrases of the pontificates of John Paul II and Benedict XVI is “new evangelization.” But in the Duomo of Milan, the cathedral of one of the most important and populous dioceses in the world, governed by cardinal Carlo Maria Martini...

This post is a bit out of left field, but it's a subject that has been on my mind. I was watching a documentary last night called "The Source." It's about the Beatniks, focusing on the big three: Kerouac, Ginsburg and Burroughs. What really caught my attention was the parts about Kerouac. There were clips of what I think is the last interview of Jack Kerouac by, of all people, William F. Buckley on his "Firing Line" show. It was just a few months before Kerouac died and he was a mess: a much older man, slurring his words, seeming...

Revenge of the '60's Written by Jack Engelhard Monday, April 25, 2005 The 1960s just won't quit. Today, from the New York Times and elsewhere, we learn that Pope Benedict XVI was turned into a traditionalist when, back in the 1960s and serving as a professor at the University of Tubingen, he saw the face of Marxism and radical leftism and said, “no thank you.” The 60s changed all of us, some for better, some for worse. Jane Fonda is back and getting fairly good press. Ward Churchill keeps drawing big crowds, and of the three A-list authors we've lost...