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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history museums pragmatic historian

“Two Broken Hips Away from Closing”

This tweet by public historian Larry Cebula out of Spokane, Washington, is painful in that there are far too many small museum situations where this is true. Often local history museums have been started by older people in a community, folks at or near retirement who are thinking of their personal legacies or the legacies of their community. They’ve got the time and motivation to start a collection or save a building and put together…

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When Books Aren’t Good Enough as They Are Written

When I was a kid, I had a set of Reader’s Digest Best Loved Books for Young Readers. I liked the look of the set on my bookshelf and enjoyed making sure they were in numbered order, but I don’t think I ever read more than one story out of them (“Madame Curie,” I believe) during my entire childhood. I finally got rid of these books because they always bothered me. I knew they contained…

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