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…
It Started with an Email I got an interesting question by email recently. It concerned the use of profanity in a historic document … should it be used or not, specifically within a direct quote? Or, should the swear words, specifically fuck and shit, have asterisks replacing letters thusly: f*** and s***? My reply was that if the direct quote illuminates the history in some way, the swear words should be used as is, spelled…