Havi Brooks has a really useful practice she calls The Book of Me; basically it’s a notebook where she jots down things she notices about herself–her feelings, body, attitudes, productivity, and more–so that she can revisit her observations and improve her future experiences with a place, event, person, etc. You can read more about it […]
[Continue reading...]Advising “alternative career” graduate students
September 26, 2011 By
I’m working pretty closely with a few of my public history grad students this semester, and in so doing, I’ve been reflecting on my earlier experiences with grad students in museum studies. Advising grad students who are focused on vocations outside academia has been a joy to me, but it’s meant I’ve had to shift […]
[Continue reading...]Random bullets of September
September 11, 2011 By
I accomplished an amazing number and quantity of things today, but of course it wasn’t enough. And now I’m supposed to be grading, so instead I’m blogging, random-bullets style. I had a lovely happy hour on Friday with Lisa V, who introduced me to a bunch of other moms I should know. Lisa and I […]
[Continue reading...]I haven’t paid any attention to the September 11 memorial coverage
September 11, 2011 By
. . . because I’m not inhabiting the appropriate emotional and intellectual space right now. As a public historian, I suppose I should be interested in the performance of memory and its material culture, but I’m not feeling it right now. Although I now know people who were in New York City that day as […]
[Continue reading...]Sky and. . .sky?
September 9, 2011 By
We’re having a crappy air quality week here in Boise. Here’s what the sky looked like last week: And here’s what the sky looked like this afternoon: There are supposed to be foothills and mountains on the near horizon in that photo. Ugh. Sometimes driving through Boise is like driving through the Los Angeles basin […]
[Continue reading...]Six, and Eighty-eight
September 5, 2011 By
Six Fang has already written a paean to five. (And he totally stole my idea for a blog post, the bastard, and then did a far better job than I would have.) Six years ago today (Labor Day–ha ha) at around 1:30 p.m., I finally delivered baby Lucas into the world. Forty-plus hours of labor […]
[Continue reading...]Cultural and geographical illiteracy ahoy
August 29, 2011 By
Pop quiz! Where, even though both the primary- and secondary-source readings for my U.S. history survey repeatedly used the word “Virginia,” did my students today think the Chesapeake is located? (And no, I don’t have any international students in this class.) Leave your answers, as well as your favorite student geography blunders, in the comments. […]
[Continue reading...]Cookie blogging
August 28, 2011 By
It ends up my grandmother’s memorial/family reunion is scheduled for the day we’re having Lucas’s birthday party. We won’t, therefore, be attending. Accordingly, I’m memorializing my grandmother in other small ways. When I was a kid, she and I used to make cookies together–and even once I was an adult, when she knew I was […]
[Continue reading...]In memory of my grandmother, who passed today
August 23, 2011 By
Carmel Point The extraordinary patience of things! This beautiful place defaced with a crop of surburban houses– How beautiful when we first beheld it, Unbroken field of poppy and lupin walled with clean cliffs; No intrusion but two or three horses pasturing, Or a few milch cows rubbing their flanks on the outcrop rockheads– Now […]
[Continue reading...]It’s the first day of classes
August 22, 2011 By
. . .so this is all I got. I suspect I’m going to need a few laughs this week. You?
[Continue reading...]
