design ideas observations

A Tiny But Significant Change in Fitted Sheets

Have you ever struggled to figure out which way to put a fitted sheet onto a mattress, particularly a queen-size mattress? Queen mattresses and their fitted sheets are fairly close to square, so inevitably I end up putting the sheet on incorrectly the first time around. While not an earth-shattering problem, it was annoying. And then someone had a brilliant idea and made a tiny but significant change to fitted bed sheets. Some fitted bed…

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history ideas pragmatic historian thought fodder

Now & Then: A Useful History Podcast

One of the most important uses of history is to use it to work ourselves out of predicaments we are facing RIGHT NOW. It’s easy to assume that because history is about what happened in the past, we can set it aside. That it has nothing to say to us now because conditions were different in the past. Except that humanity seems to cycle through the same sorts of challenges even when presented with what…

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ideas museums pragmatic historian preservation

The Museum of Loaned Artifacts

Chatter from Museum Colleagues Last week’s post about what to do with three handmade baptism gowns stirred some chatter from museum colleagues on social media, particularly LinkedIn. One colleague is trying to figure out what to do with his letterman’s jacket, which he said he would not accept for his own museum’s collection. Another wondered whether the sacrament of baptism will continue. And another, David Grabitske, who has written for my blog in the past,…

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