history pragmatic historian

The Covert Power of Fiber Arts

In this week’s post, I continue my discussion of Margaret Renkl’s article “Waking Up to History” in the New York Times. To see where this began, read last Monday’s post. Are Fiber Arts a Way to Subjugate Women? Along with being a public historian, I am a fiber artist and have been since I was a child. I learned some from my mom, who crochets extraordinary afghans, but I was also encouraged in my self-taught…

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history pragmatic historian

History in Numbers

Within organizations, there are people who enjoy playing with numbers, and then there is everybody else. Those in the Everybody Else category react to financial statements with a glazed look at best or utter terror at worst. Often, people who feel they don’t have a hope of understanding financial statements are disconnected from the source of the numbers on those statements. The numbers are merely theoretical to them, which makes them difficult to grasp. Here’s…

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