family history museums pragmatic historian travel

A Sleepover at Linden Hill

Last weekend, Hubby and I had the pleasure of sleeping over at Linden Hill Historic Estate in Little Falls, Minnesota. (https://linden-hill.org) The invitation came from good friends of ours who chose to celebrate a significant wedding anniversary there. Having worked for the Morrison County Historical Society for over 25 years, I knew a little something about the history of the place and had even been there before ownership had been transferred to the city. The estate…

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history pragmatic historian technology writing

My Websites Are Being Used to Train AI – Is That a Good Thing?

If you spend any amount of time online these days, you’ll hear about two things ad nauseum: The meltdown of Twitter and the wonders of AI (artificial intelligence), specifically text generated by tools like ChatGPT or Google’s Bard. I haven’t had a chance to use ChatGPT because it’s always overloaded with users when I try and I’m not inclined to pay a subscription for a service that I want to test. Google’s Bard has a…

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family history inspiration museums pragmatic historian

The Game’s Afoot at the Sherlock Holmes Exhibit

When I heard the Minnesota Historical Society (MNHS) was launching a special exhibit on Sherlock Holmes last fall, I knew I had to go. I grew up reading Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes mysteries and have watched a number of the screen versions. For those of us who are Holmes fans, we mentally like to put ourselves in his shoes, thinking we could use our powers of observations to solve crimes. Hubby and I…

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family home pragmatic historian projects work in progress

My Husband Cleaned My Clock

No, he did not punch me in the face, which is one meaning of the phrase, “cleaned my clock.” He literally cleaned my clock. In his effort to repaint the kitchen, Erik had to remove everything hanging on the walls and clean the walls and cupboards with degreaser. I shared the following photo in last week’s blog post, pointing out how the area behind the stove still had to be painted. In the middle foreground…

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family history home pragmatic historian projects

The Work in the House Continues

Busy, busy, busy. Now that the tearing apart phase of our dining room renovation is finished, we’ve been spending the past couple of weeks on the putting together phase. After the building inspector okayed the tear-down and framing part of the job, which had us inserting a few extra two-by-fours in corners so we’d have something to attach sheetrock to, we got right on putting up insulation. We also used spray foam around the windows,…

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