Olio: A miscellaneous collection of things (or, when I was trying to remember the definition of olio, what popped to mind was “random shit”). When I started this blog 6 years ago, I wanted a way to share miscellaneous stuff that I found interesting but with a heading I could use habitually, so I could find this stuff again. Hence, “olio.” My last olio post was in April 2016. Not sure how I lost track…
Big, complex ideas take a significant amount of thought. Such is the case with the Grand Unified Theory of Preservation I’ve been working on for years. The thinking has continued since I shared the post I wrote about the theory a couple of weeks ago on this blog. Friend and history colleague David Grabitske sparked fresh thinking about the theory with a question he left on LinkedIn: “Where does Language Preservation fit? Just curious.“ Yes,…
I’m having one of those moments when there are too many things on my mind to blog about, which is making it tough to focus on just one. As I noodle around with the others, let me start with an idea I had based on dealing with eczema for a decade. In trying to find ways to keep my eczema under control, I’ve looked thoroughly at what I ingest, including foods and various supplements. I…
This past week I read an interesting analysis of the National Register of Historic Places in regards to ethnic representation of Minnesota sites on the Register. The article appears on the Minnesota Local History blog and was written by Julia Larson. It is called “Representation and The National Register in Minnesota,” hence the title of my blog post. Julia analyzed the Minnesota listings on the National Register to determine which of those listed under the…
I live in a small town with a population of under 10,000 people. We’re often referred to as rural, and our county is most assuredly rural. When it comes to politics, our small town and rural county are true-to-type, with a majority of voters supporting conservative candidates in the last two presidential elections. In 2012, when Barack Obama and Mitt Romney were on the ticket, Minnesota as a state chose Obama with 52.65% of the…