Hobby Lobby is a chain of big-box craft stores in the United States, privately held by David Green. Green is a committed Christian: he is a major donor to evangelical causes and keeps Hobby Lobby closed on Sundays. This […] Continue Reading…
Banned Books, Again
My observation is that we’re all hypocrites about freedom of speech. When it comes to speech we agree with, of course we’re in favor of it. When it comes to speech we disagree with, we have all sorts of […] Continue Reading…
Dr. Seuss
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This post isn’t all that topical anymore, but a recent visit to the University of Minnesota’s Children’s Literature Research Collection has helped to answer a longstanding question that I had.
In March of this year, Dr. Seuss Enterprises, the organization that […] Continue Reading…
September 11
I wrote the piece below on the second anniversary of the attacks in 2003, at which time my wife and I were graduate students at the University of Minnesota. The attacks were fresh enough in my mind that I […] Continue Reading…
Talk by Ken Wheeler
From the weekly Reinhardt Eagle:
Dr. Kenneth Wheeler to speak at the Funk Heritage Center
During the Funk’s October Events, Dr. Kenneth Wheeler will discuss his book, Modern Cronies: Southern Industrialism from Gold Rush to Convict Labor, 1829-1894, which details the […] Continue Reading…
The Vinland Map is Fake
From YaleNews (hat tip: Dan Franke):
The Vinland Map, once hailed as the earliest depiction of the New World, is awash in 20th-century ink. A team of conservators and conservation scientists at Yale has found compelling new evidence for this […] Continue Reading…
Herbert Hoover
One final presidential site for this summer: the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library and Museum in West Branch, Iowa, just west of Iowa City. We stopped in while en route from Minneapolis to St. Louis. To my annoyance the management […] Continue Reading…
Museums in St. Louis
In addition to the Civil War Museum, enjoyed a couple of other interesting ones:
• The World Chess Hall of Fame in the Central West End. It’s not a history museum as such, but it’s very well done. At the […] Continue Reading…
The Civil War in Missouri
Missouri was a slave state, but never an actual member of the Confederacy. Two factions claimed to represent Missouri’s legitimate government, but only the Unionist one retained control of it. With war looming in 1860, Governor Robert Marcellus Stewart […] Continue Reading…
Mayday Books
Mayday Books has existed on the West Bank of the University of Minnesota since the early 1990s. It was an institution when I was in graduate school and I notice that it’s still going strong. It even has its […] Continue Reading…