I saw the following exchange on Twitter between @GregWiker and @Chris_Levesque_ and had to jump in. Here was my response: As I indicate in the tweet, writing and the study of history go hand-in-hand. It can be difficult for students to come up with interesting content to write about, particularly when they are young and don’t have a lifetime of experience to expound upon. Meanwhile, historians have more topics to write about than they could…
In order to explore The Litter Layer I brought up in the last post, I’ve created a challenge to get you thinking about it. The Litter Layer is my term for what I expect archaeologists of the future will find in terms of dumps, landfills, and litter everywhere within this era’s layer of earth, especially in comparison to archaeological digs of previous eras. Take a walk a block or two from your home and make…
Today is my birthday. That makes it a great time for a birthday history challenge! I can credit my birthday for nudging me toward history, specifically astrology. Yes, astrology. That unscientific load of hogwash** that aligns human personalities to the constellations. I’m a Libra and a proud one, at that. The symbol for Libra is the scales of justice and I’m all about fairness and justice and balance. It’s the only symbol within western astrology…
Pretty much every museum has them, unless they have a massive army of curators or registrars madly accessioning items as they come in the door. They are the dreaded . . . Collections Backlogs. [Cue the offstage scream.] The Museum Cataloging Process With the downsizing of the Silent Generation and retiring Baby Boomers, both of whom amassed a good many items during the post-World War II pro-consumerism era, museums are being flooded with items being…
When I put together my history bucket list on The Pragmatic Historian, I included as one of the items “Watch fabric dying and weaving within an old mill.” Well, I haven’t been able to watch the processes of weaving and dying fabric within a mill, but I did have an opportunity to take a tour of a woolen mill. Not far from where I live, in Randall, Minnesota, is a fiber arts mecca that started…