This might post might feel a bit off-topic for The Pragmatic Historian, but I know several of my colleagues in the Minnesota history museum field are in my audience and I need to pass along some advice. (Appropriately enough, today is Labor Day and the topic relates to the day.) The Legacy Amendment & Grants Some background for those not in Minnesota: In 2008 voters passed the Legacy Amendment, which provides sales tax funding for…
Okay, one more post related to the Minnesota Alliance of Local History Museums conference, then I will be on to other things. (See how much fodder a conference can provide for a blog?) While I work at a museum and my employer could have paid for my attendance at the conference, I chose to pay for the conference and its related expenses (hotel, mileage, meals) personally. Why? One major reason, but there is an ancillary…
In my last blog post, I discussed attending the 2019 annual conference of the Minnesota Alliance of Local History Museums at Treasure Island Resort & Casino. While that post covered the sessions I attended, I also led a session and figured that warranted its own blog post, which is what this post is devoted to. My session, “Leaving Breadcrumbs: Succession Planning the Hansel & Gretel Way,” appears on page 20 of the conference guide. My…
‘Tis conference season in the Minnesota museum world. It starts in early spring and runs through the fall, with all sorts of fascinating conferences available for further education and networking. I’m not terribly keen on the term “networking” in the context of conferences, partially because networking has such a glad-handy, inauthentic reputation, partially because conferences often don’t give people time to network, and partially because folks in the Minnesota museum field tend to be toiling…
Waking Up to History An opinion piece by Margaret Renkl in the New York Times caught my attention recently. Called “Waking Up to History,” the piece explores Renkl’s experiences with learning fiber arts from her grandmothers and how she cast those experiences aside by the time she was in college because she “had internalized the message that work traditionally done by men is inherently more valuable than work traditionally done by women.” As a feminist,…