history music pragmatic historian

Duran Duran – “Keep Moving Into the Future But Acknowledge Your Past”

By Mary | by Mary

Over the past week my Twitter feed has been burning up with news of Duran Duran. It’s almost as though they’ve released a new album …. And they have! The album “Future Past” dropped on October 22, 2021, the fifteenth studio album for one of my all-time favorite bands. Whoever is operating Duran Duran’s Twitter account is doing a marvelous job of keeping fans updated on the band’s current media appearances to promote the album.…

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history ideas pragmatic historian thought fodder

Now & Then: A Useful History Podcast

By Mary | by Mary

One of the most important uses of history is to use it to work ourselves out of predicaments we are facing RIGHT NOW. It’s easy to assume that because history is about what happened in the past, we can set it aside. That it has nothing to say to us now because conditions were different in the past. Except that humanity seems to cycle through the same sorts of challenges even when presented with what…

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art history writing

Just the Punctuation

By Mary | by Mary

I ran across a cool new tool on Twitter recently. Created by tech writer Clive Thompson (@pomeranian99 on Twitter), the tool strips all the letters from your writing, leaving you only the punctuation. It’s called Just the Punctuation [https://just-the-punctuation.glitch.me]. If you’re a writer, go ahead and give it a try. Paste some of your writing into the box and click the Submit button at the bottom. It helps if you use  a substantial piece of…

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museums pragmatic historian

Wealth Disparity in the Museum World

By Mary | by Mary

Recently, the museum Twitter community was abuzz with a report from the trade union AFSCME (American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees), specifically from AFSCME Cultural Workers United. The report, called “Cultural Institutions Cashed In, Workers Got Sold Out,” presents information on the cultural sector during the COVID-19 pandemic, including museums of all types, historical sites, zoos, and botanical gardens. It explains how the pandemic hit the sector in terms of closures and the…

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music olio reading

Olio: October 11, 2021

By Mary | by Mary

Olio: A miscellaneous collection of things Today is National Coming Out Day and Indigenous Peoples’ Day (with President Joe Biden the first president to officially proclaim it so). Those are great holidays to have as part of my birthday. I’ve had a number of small ideas for blog posts over the past couple of weeks and rather than write each one out separately, I thought I’d share a bunch in one of my Olio posts.…

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