action challenge observations

Earth Is Sick of Our Sh!t

In Central Minnesota, we had been having an incredibly mild winter after a couple of serious fall blizzards, after which the temps got so warm that the snow quickly melted. Very little snow fell in December and January. I’d say we only have about a foot of snow on the ground today (February 22, 2021). Our mild winter became bitterly cold for about two weeks in February, with the temps being in the teens and…

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challenge history ideas observations pragmatic historian

A Social Contract of Care and Concern

  I found the above story on Twitter. It is attributed to anthropologist Margaret Mead as told to Ira Byock. It relates how Mead felt that the first sign of civilization within a culture was finding a broken femur that had healed, indicating that someone had taken the time to allow an injured person to heal by protecting and caring for them. It’s an interesting story, though the tweet has since been removed, probably because…

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challenge design history pragmatic historian preservation

From Notre Dame to Yogurt Cups: Toward a Grand Unified Theory of Preservation

This is a post I’ve spent years thinking about. When it comes to historic preservation, the focus tends to be on buildings and structures that are historically or architecturally significant. Through the National Register of Historic Places, there are 4 criteria under which a structure can be nominated: Those … A. That are associated with events that have made a significant contribution to the broad patterns of our history; or B.That are associated with the…

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