history pragmatic historian

How Cities and Nonprofits Are Similar

My History with Community Visioning Sessions I had an epiphany. My husband and I attended a community visioning session, OurTown 56345, last week. We have attended many such visioning sessions in the past. My history with such sessions is that they generate a lot of excitement at the outset, with organizers eager to hear what residents have to say and residents eager to share their ideas for community development. These sessions often feature color dots,…

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observations reading

I’m Not an Action-Adventure Gal

After a marathon day of reading yesterday that ended at 11:30 p.m., I am finally finished with the first book I’ve read in 2020: Reamde by Neal Stephenson. I picked it up on the promise that it would involve technology, which it does but only tangentially. What I discovered in this 1000+ page tome was a lot of shoot-em-up action-adventure. If you like action-adventure, that’s great, but I’m not an action-adventure gal. The book was…

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history museums pragmatic historian

How to Market History’s Importance as Infrastructure

Last week’s blog post, “Two Broken Hips Away from Closing,” was inspired by a tweet from historian Larry Cebula. This week’s post is inspired by a tweet from historian David Grabitske (as seen above) in response to that post. Last year around about this time, I came to the realization that history is part of a community’s infrastructure and I wrote about it here. Since then, any time I have the opportunity, I tell people…

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