We\u27ve Got A Movement Down in Selma: Day 5

My people, my people, listen. The battle is in our hands. The battle is in our hands in Mississippi and Alabama and all over the United States.... And so as we go away this afternoon, let us go away more than ever before committed to this struggle and committed to nonviolence. I must admit to you that there are still some difficult days ahead. We are still in for a season of suffering.... [excerpt

Like An Idea Whose Time Has Come: Day 2

They told us we wouldn’t get here. And there were those who said that we would get here only over their dead bodies, but all the world today knows that we are here and we are standing before the forces of power in the state of Alabama saying, \u27We ain’t goin’ let nobody turn us around.\u27 I met Edith today. We were walking down the road and Edith was with us. She didn\u27t say much. She just sort of gurgled, dangling from a sling on her mother\u27s chest. [excerpt

Consumptive Use History

It\u27s been five years since I was living in DC and working at the Lincoln Cottage. I don\u27t often talk about my short stint in DC at American University (let\u27s just say that the University and I didn\u27t quite mesh philosophically) and working with the National Trust for Historic Preservation at President Lincoln\u27s Cottage right as the site was opening. My time at the cottage was a blip on the radar; barely any digital footprints still exist from then. [excerpt

Pride Overcometh

A couple weeks ago I got the chance to wave to Ben Franklin and Mark Twain. They waved back from the stage as the curtain dropped. Jess leaned in to me. I didn\u27t realize that this is what history is to you, she said, with a bit of derision in her voice. I understand my wife\u27s derision. Disney World is not the first place that comes to mind when most people think of powerful and meaningful history. But for me, it is where I began to find the magic in history. [excerpt

On Larsen: Friends, Philosophers and Historians

It\u27s been a melancholic week for me. My boss Katie\u27s blog post on Tuesday set my mind spinning back to a friend we lost two years ago. When the Civil War Institute noticed some video footage of Larsen that\u27s on YouTube, it only cemented those thoughts into my mind. The video started racing around the blagosphere, and the thoughts percolated. And the words used to describe Dave were daggers to my heart: National Park Service historian. [excerpt

Crowdsourcing History: When We All Get To Help

I\u27m a bit bitter this week. The arrival of the Space Shuttle Discovery to the Washington, D.C. area has got me down. My first dream job as a kid, before I wanted to be a LEGO model designer or National Park Service ranger, was the illustrious position of space garbage man. I think part of that came from my grandfather\u27s penchant for taking me around the neighborhood on trash day during his smoke breaks and picking through the fine assemblages of junk the neighbors had left by the curb. There was some sort of glamour in the idea of seeing the trash of the stars, I guess. But a lot of that desire came from a deep fascination with space. One of my favorite sandbox toys was a die-cast Space Shuttle that sat on a big-rig trailer. The little sticker on its nose read, Discovery. I had two of the iconic early \u2790s LEGO Space Shuttles. In the past year, I\u27ve acquired two more. [excerpt

Ring the Bells: Happy 149th Birthday, America!

Friend of the blog and stalwart DC area historian Aaron Urbanski posted a pithy update to his Facebook wall on Monday, a status update which has infected my brain over the past couple days. The idea is so infectious, so amazingly simple yet profound that I\u27m shamelessly stealing it and blowing it up to epic proportions. [excerpt

Fire on the Mountain: A Forest Fire Ignored?

There was a massive forest fire on the South Mountain at the edge of Adams County. It ripped through thousands of acres of woodland along the crest of the ridge. The undergrowth went up like a match. The spring up to this point had been unusually dry. And a fire started. [excerpt

Why It\u27s Interpretive: Bid \u27Em In

Browsing the provocative blog Jubilo! The Emancipation Century recently, I came upon a post featuring a curious YouTube video. So why did Bid \u27Em In speak so deeply to me? I think it\u27s because it places you in the shoes of the 15 year old slave woman being auctioned. It\u27s not an intellectual investigation of slavery. It\u27s not an historical narrative written after the fact of a particular event. It\u27s visceral. [excerpt

Things Never Change: Piecing Together College Life

Sometimes you stumble on something on eBay you just can\u27t pass up. It\u27s that $6 buy that is awkward, odd and just a little out of your scope. But it\u27s only$6. If you\u27d buy a burger for $6, you shouldn\u27t pass up an original letter from 1835. Every letter has a story. And each of those stories has its own drama, its own meaning, its own power. The mundanities of human life can be just as powerful as the battles and charges. [excerpt