I recently caught a ride with a museum colleague to a meeting. During our journey, my colleague made an observation about me that surprised me. He said, “You ask good questions.” And my first thought was, doesn’t everyone ask good questions? I very much subscribe to the belief that there are no dumb questions. Questions come naturally to human beings, with toddlers asking, “Why?” or “What’s this?” incessantly. Questions are a sign of curiosity, and…
Do you remember travelogues? Maybe I should be asking if you are old enough to remember travelogues because they haven’t been a thing for decades. When I was a high schooler in the 1980s, travelogues were events wherein people who had gone on trips to exotic places would bring back slides and present them with commentary for a public audience. This was at a time when PowerPoint and digital slide decks didn’t exist, so these…
As so often happens with blog posts, a number of little things come together to make a much bigger topic. Such is the case with today’s post. It started with a National Register nomination I was reading, was further reinforced by the mention of a local building in a city document, then developed into a full-fledged puzzlement followed by a really big question. Historic Structures with Non-Historic Additions I sit on the Minnesota State Review…
Johnny Appleseed – The Mythic Tree-Planting Hero Remember learning about Johnny Appleseed as a kid in elementary school? I do. For my readers who may not have heard about Johnny Appleseed, he was a guy from the past who, we were told, wore a tin pot on his head and walked all over the place planting apple trees in America. It’s a pretty vague mythic sort of tale. Where did this guy walk? In my…
The Importance of an Accurate Census I recently attended a board retreat in Rochester, MN, for the Minnesota Council of Nonprofits (MCN) having joined the board this year (2019). During the retreat, there was a panel entitled “Census 2020: Nonprofits Take Action.” When it comes to the United States’ democratic republic, we hear a lot about getting people out to vote in elections. However, one of the main foundations of having proper representation for the…