Forecasting the future by looking at trends, both past and present, takes a bit of imagination. Today’s challenge is meant to stretch your imagination. Because the effects of climate change are in our faces, let’s use this as an opportunity to forecast what might happen where you are by looking at climate change in other areas of the world. Read the following articles for inspiration and then make note of what has happened to the…
Between 2013 and 2014, the Center for the Future of Museums of the American Alliance of Museums offered an online program to teach willing museum staff how to think like futurists. Elizabeth Merritt, founding director of the Center for the Future of Museums, put out the call for students and led us through this course by providing us with assignments digitally. Obviously, I was one of those willing students and I delighted in the course,…
History is everywhere. I’ve always kind of known that, but since starting The Pragmatic Historian and purposely looking for it, I want to shout it from the rooftops: “HISTORY IS EVERYWHERE!!” Where the Past Begins Within the past week, I finished reading Amy Tan’s memoir, “Where the Past Begins.” If the title isn’t enough to convince you that she used history to write the book (the word “Past” is a dead giveaway), she opens the…