Ordinary Obsessions
Page 47
He knew, though, that such could not be. This was a moment out of time, of necessity ephemeral. What lay ahead could not be discerned clearly. The future was opaque and lost in the mists of chance and choice. A heaviness descended on him for a moment, but he brushed it away. There was a price to pay for one’s pursuit of an obsession. In that moment, he embraced one other truth. Despite all the apparent costs, some paths in life were not to be avoided, some fates not to be denied. Somewhere, it had been written thus.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR :
Tom Corbett is emeritus senior scientist and an affiliate of the Institute for Research on Poverty at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where he served as associate and acting director for a decade before his retirement. He received a doctorate in social welfare from the University of Wisconsin and taught various social policy courses there for many years. During his long academic and policy career, he consulted with government at the local, state, and national levels including a stint in Washington, D.C. where he helped develop President Clinton’s welfare reform legislation. He has written dozens of articles and reports on poverty, social policy, and human services issues and given hundreds of talks across the nation on these topics. His most recent co-authored books are Evidence-Based Policymaking (2010, with Karen Bogenschneider), The Other Side of the World (2011, with Mary Jo Clark, Michael Simonds, and Haywood Turrentine), and Return to the Other Side of the World (2013, with Mary Jo Clark, Michael Simonds, Katherine Sohn, and Haywood Turrentine). His recent sole-authored works include Tenuous Tendrils and Palpable Passions, both published in 2017. In 2018, he reworked and republished three earlier works in what is called the Confessions Trilogy: Confessions of a Clueless Rebel, Confessions of a Wayward Academic, and Confessions of an Accidental Scholar. The author resides in Madison, Wisconsin.