I recently returned from a trip to the Washington DC area. My brother and his wife invited my husband and me out. It was my first trip to DC and wouldn’t you know it, there was a partial government shutdown. None of the Smithsonian Museums were open. This ended up being a blessing, not because I didn’t want to see any of the Smithsonian-related museums, but because I wanted to see too many of them.…
Tidying Up with Marie Kondo Have you caught the KonMari fever yet? I have. My husband and I have been watching the new Netflix show “Tidying Up with Marie Kondo.” The KonMari Method is Kondo’s branded process of sorting and folding and arranging possessions. She has been passionate about tidying since she was a child and on the show she will often exclaim, “I love a mess!” Kondo wrote a couple of books a number…
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…
I began my job at a county historical society in Minnesota over 20 years ago. I seem to be saying that a lot lately, but I’ve reached a point where I’ve served enough time that I can look back and pick up on themes within my work. Path to Museum Succession Planning A big theme has been succession planning, only I didn’t know I was doing this from the beginning. When I started, I was…