I began my job at a county historical society in Minnesota over 20 years ago. I seem to be saying that a lot lately, but I’ve reached a point where I’ve served enough time that I can look back and pick up on themes within my work. Path to Museum Succession Planning A big theme has been succession planning, only I didn’t know I was doing this from the beginning. When I started, I was…
I read an article from the St. Paul Pioneer Press via the Brainerd Dispatch recently that I’m feeling the need to talk back to. The article is called “Antiques dealers find industry lagging, numbers shrinking – hope for eventual renaissance.” It quotes a number of people in the industry discussing how antiques stores are going out of business and making comments about how young people just aren’t interested in old things anymore. One says the…
I read. A lot. In looking back through the books I’ve read in the past 5 years (yes, I keep a list), I see that I’ve read a number of very good ones. So, when I say a book is the most enlightening one I’ve read in 5 years, that’s saying something. “American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America” by Colin Woodard has completely changed how I see the…
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…
I wasn’t sure whether to count this book among my Year of Creative Reading, but decided I must when I realized it gave me an idea for a class I could create. Hey, if a book is that inspiring, surely it should count toward creative reading. I found this book quite by accident at the library. It’s called “The News: A User’s Manual” and was written by Alain de Botton. After looking through de Botton’s…