history pragmatic historian

What Do a Young Blacksmith and Public Domain Have to Do With Each Other?

My brain has a tendency to connect the most disparate things. But isn’t that where creativity comes from? So, let’s forge ahead with today’s blog post! An Enthusiastic Blacksmith Over the holidays while our kids were home, our Eldest Son introduced us to the videos of Alec Steele. Alec Steele is a young British blacksmith who produces YouTube videos showing people his projects and experiments in his shop. He is excitable, sharing his craft with…

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Being a Creator in a World of Too Much Stuff

While I was at the Twin Cities Book Festival, I picked up a few books at the used book sale. “The Plenitude: Creativity, Innovation, and Making Stuff” by Rich Gold was one of those books. It’s a slim volume, so it only took a couple of days to read. It expressed in written form a number of ideas I’ve had about being a creator in a world of too much stuff. Rich Gold was an…

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reading

YOCR #17 – Meh.

I think I have come to the end of my Year of Creative Reading. I have two books on creativity sitting at my bedside waiting to be read and my reaction to them is, “Meh.” I don’t care if I ever get around to reading them. Okay, so I did read the section that supposedly has a direct relationship to me in one of them, but that was 3 pages and I’m not interested in…

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Olio – October 24, 2015

Olio: a miscellaneous collection of things So much fascinating stuff to see, read, hear, enjoy …. so little time. Passing along some of what I’ve found to you. The Unfair Truth About How Creative People Really Succeed – If you’re any kind of writer, artist, creative person, you need to read this, then you need to figure out how to build a network of support. Boredom is not a problem to be solved. It’s the last…

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Where Do You Focus?

I’ve been reading Twyla Tharp’s “The Creative Habit: Learn It and Use It for Life” as part of my Year of Creative Reading. I’m not ready to report on the book as a whole because I haven’t finished it yet, but I do want to cover a topic brought up by Tharp in Chapter 3. Tharp discusses an artist’s creative DNA, which includes an artist’s preferred focal length. She says, “All of us find comfort…

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