Thinking Out Loud
Another powerful piece of historical fiction from Geraldine Brooks, Caleb’s Crossing is the story of Caleb Cheeshahteaumuck, the first Native American to graduate from Harvard in 1665. The narrator is Bethia Mayfield, resident of Great Harbor on Martha’s Vineyard, who has some basis in the original settlers of the island, the Mayhews. But, as with [...]
I think the irony of the Civil War is that there was rarely a time when people either North or South were very happy with their government. The Confederacy tried to unite states who were seceding from the Union because they did not want to be united, a paradox that haunted them while in the [...]
I started drafting an entry on July 30 but only got a first paragraph done that blamed the craziness of July for my summer silence. Three workshops in three different locations kept me on the road and busy, requiring that I take this past week to get caught up…and very much settled back in. The [...]
We’re still deciding on the “s”…some of it may depend on the availability of domain names. It is a beautiful Sunday morning at the farm and I was checking in on my online classes so, since I’m tethered, I thought I’d do a quick farm update. This weekend was all about the chickens. We had [...]
I finished Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong by James Loewen. I read the first edition, published in 1995. I was particularly taken with his description of the more recent past and how poorly books address it: that “recent past” in 1995 was my own childhood: Vietnam, the energy [...]
Tim’s thoughtful Assorted Stuff blog post about textbooks coincided with my reading of Blood: Stories of Life and Death from the Civil War, an anthology of mostly primary source documents. While it didn’t offer specific dates and times like a textbook would, it provided a human view of the time and, as Tim pointed out, [...]
Another week of feeling disjointed. I left my laptop power supply in the burg so had to use husband’s windows 7 machine all week. I found it easy to use and I mostly work in the cloud anyway but it wasn’t my air. Plus I found myself missing the comfort of my desk and office. [...]
A year after I originally planned it, I am reading John Adams, David McCullough’s biography of the great American leader. I have seen the television series so can’t really get Paul Giamatti out of my head, and it appears that he did a good job of portraying Adams: plain spoken, intense, impatient. In talks I [...]
I hadn’t been to church for several weeks…busy traveling and working. But, I went yesterday, mostly to hear The Delvers. They are a local group that plays folks, jazz and western swing. One of the band members belongs to my church and I arranged for them to play. As we were getting set up, one [...]
Yet another Hampton Inn. I’m doing a digital storytelling workshop for the next two days. I’ve mainly been doing administrator training so this will be a nice change of pace. I had fun playing with photostory and moviemaker last week and I think I have the workshop nicely paced out. A short into this morning, [...]