Luddites Unite: Keeping ScOR #21
Screen grab of Zoom notification, with box checked. In South Carolina, as in many other places, the sprouting of AI data centers is putting stress on...
Desperate Times: Keeping ScOR #20
Memorial for Alex Pretti, near 26th and Nicollet Avenue, Minneapolis. Photo by Todd Biewen. For days after the killing of Alex Pretti by federal agents, I...
New Year's Devolution: Keeping ScOR #19
As of this month it’s been one year of Keeping ScOR. I wasn’t sure what this newsletter would be when I birthed it at the start of 2025. I only knew I wanted...
"Free" Press?: Keeping ScOR #18
The great thing about having a news and information system dominated by private corporations is that those news purveyors are independent and free of...
Revenge of the Manbabies: Keeping ScOR #17
Reductionist theories about the state of the world are deeply appealing, lord knows. I empathize with people who feel they can wave a hand at society’s many...
Heroes of the Resistance: Keeping ScOR #16
Do we dare call Sandwich Guy a hero? (Sorry, no pun.) A Washington, D.C. jury acquitted Sean C. Dunn last week on charges of misdemeanor assault, after the...
Mankato Grows Up: Keeping ScOR #15
The other week I had reason to visit my hometown in the Upper Midwest. Some of you will remember that I was raised in Mankato, Minnesota, a college town 80...
The Blue Scare: Keeping ScOR #14
This is not a rapid-response newsletter. I don’t write these pieces in a day. I choose a topic and start in, gather building blocks, then tinker and add a...
Rest in Peace, Mom: Keeping ScOR #13
I never imagined I’d write about my mother in this newsletter. Keeping ScOR is meant to be about the stuff Scene on Radio traffics in – questions of social...
Are We There Yet? Keeping ScOR #12
The Washington Post headline caught my eye. Something about Georgia sentencing a journalist. I read the lead: “A prominent independent journalist in Georgia...
Taking the Ax to Public Broadcasting: Keeping ScOR #11
It was well into the spring semester of my senior year in college and I had no plan for my post-graduation life. Oops. Plan A had just fallen through. I’d...
The Zohran Effect: Keeping ScOR #10
Two weeks have gone by since New Yorkers voted, and Zohran Mamdani’s victory as the Democratic nominee for mayor became official last week. Mamdani’s...
Capture the Flag?: Keeping ScOR #9
June 26, 2025 At the “No Kings” protest in my town, Durham, North Carolina, two things got my attention. First, the turnout. Compared with another anti-Trump...
Of Federal Troops and Mistletoe: Keeping ScOR #8
June 12, 2025 Black locust tree attacked by mistletoe, southern Poland. Photo by John Biewen You may or may not have noticed, but the gap between...
Making Ignorance Sacred Again: Keeping ScOR #7
May 5, 2025 Shadow of Confederate monument, Robeson County, NC. Photo by John Biewen. “The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against...
The Anti-FDR: Keeping ScOR #6
April 11, 2025 New York Times headline, April 9, 2025. Later that day Trump would backpedal on his “reciprocal” tariff policy. Photo by John Biewen Even as...
Falling into Barbarism: Keeping ScOR #5
March 28, 2025 Surveillance footage of Rumeysa Öztürk, Turkish graduate student at Tufts University, being seized off the street by ICE agents on March 25....
The New Old Racism: Keeping ScOR #4
March 10, 2025 Elon Musk on Inauguration Day, Washington, D.C. Photo: Getty Images I like to think these posts won’t always be so heavy. Maybe, once upon a...
Civil War, Class War: Keeping ScOR #3
February 14, 2025 From the poster for the 2024 movie, “Civil War.” I do not believe that a second American civil war – an active, ongoing shooting war,...
A Man Among Men: Keeping ScOR #2
January 24, 2025 Image from New York Times, January 16, 2025: “‘Where’s Our Place in Society?’ 12 Men Who Backed Trump Grapple With America” I was planning...
