Fergus Falls and Der Spiegel The town of Fergus Falls, Minnesota, recently had to publicly correct the historic record. A reporter from Der Spiegel spent several weeks in the town in order to write a story focusing on the politics of rural America. Turns out he made up a lot of the story, giving a skewed view of the city and its residents. Michele Anderson and Jake Krohn provided a correction via their article on…
Back in September, I mentioned a book I read about in The Guardian, “Sites Unseen: Uncovering Hidden Hazards in American Cities” by Scott Frickel and James R. Elliott. Because I was so curious about it, I ordered it through our public library. The library system did not have a copy of this book in circulation, but, and here is the beauty of today’s public library system, I was able to order it and they purchased…
I was writing an article on history and climate change for work when a thought dawned on me regarding how to document areas affected by climate change. The Expected Effects of Climate Change I opened my article with information about the Camp Fire, which destroyed the town of Paradise and its Gold Nugget Museum. I also discussed the Fourth National Climate Assessment, Volume II, which was recently released by the federal government. The report discusses…
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…
Over the weekend I watched “The Ballad of Buster Scruggs” on Netflix. This is the new Coen Brothers movie that they call an anthology because it contains six unrelated stories. Well, except they are related in that they are all westerns and feature death and lonely people. As I don’t know where I’m going to end up with this post, I’m giving you a SPOILER ALERT right now. If this is a movie you want…