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Blog Housekeeping @ The Pragmatic Historian

By Mary | by Mary

Having blogged my way through numerous blogs since 2006, I have seen many changes in the blogging landscape. Blogs began as a way for individuals to share their thoughts on the web. They were often personal journals, which some people loved and others thought were TMI. And then organizations, advertisers, entrepreneurs, and news sources got hold of blogging technology and turned it into a money-making content factory. Social media apps (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, Snapchat,…

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Historians Are Explorers

By Mary | by Mary

Historians are explorers. Their terrain is the past, Vast, deep, complicated. Their tools: Archival materials, Three-dimensional artifacts, Places and structures. Their discoveries are wondrous, Though-provoking, Potentially dangerous, Life-changing. They collect the past, Analyze it, And bring it into the present, So that it remains useful Now And into the future. Historians reanimate the dead. >>> Want adventure? Become a historian!

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Speedy Writing Assignment

By Mary | by Mary

During the last meeting of our local writers group, we did a speedy writing assignment. This happens when group members run out of things to share. We didn’t have any sort of assignment prepared in advance, so we took the first line of a book one of our members had with her and used that as a writing prompt. The book was The Librarian of Auschwitz by Antonio Iturbe and the first line was: “The…

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