Tag Archives: history
Justiniani
For A Hermit by Naomi Shihab Nye from Honeybee, ©2008 1. The hermit Justiniani walked across Europe after refusing to take his final vows. He walked across the colonial United States, coming to live in a cave in southern New Mexico. Once he walked from Las Cruces to San Antonio for a little visit. Justiniani …
An Autumn Leaf
From an interview with 100-year-old Alfia Distefano: How much has the world changed in the last 100 years?It has changed so much I don’t even know how to describe it. I do think I value these changes more because I know how life was before. When I was young, we didn’t have what we have …
Cavemen in Love
The “Ain Sakhri Lovers” is the oldest known depiction of two lovers embracing– over 11,000 years old. Cool!
August 6, 1945
August 6, 1945 by Millen Brand Excerpted from Local Lives: Poems About the Pennsylvania Dutch, ©1975 Fred Braun has just leaned out on a low windowsill that needs painting. There are cracks in it, but so far they have let no rain through. They can wait a little longer. This moment is his to enjoy, …
He Stands
One of the wonderful things about Local Lives: Poems About the Pennsylvania Dutch, ©1975, by Millen Brand, is that it’s not just a book of poems– it’s a local history. Ralph Berky is the real name of a real person, and the poem describes his real life: Ralph Berky by Millen Brand A German of …
Local Lives
I found an amazing book at the used book store: Local Lives: Poems About the Pennsylvania Dutch by Millen Brand, ©1975. He had kept a poetic diary for thirty-four years documenting the real people and real events of the community he lived in, publishing it almost as an afterthought. His character sketches are simply amazing. …
Less Civil
This excerpt from Leo Rosten’s People I have loved, known, or admired, ©1970, recalls an episode he uncovered while researching George Washington’s life: But I cannot forget the episode involving Washington as he was being escorted down the street of a town in New York by an official. An old Negro saw the General and …
Topic
I was trying to think of a way to teach history other than chronologically, and the only other way I could come up with was by topic. The problem is, politically at least, there are only two topics: “How can I acquire more things?” and “How can I re-create these people, in my own image …
Signature Style
Excerpted from A Geography of Time by Robert Levine, ©1997: The Chinese developed an incense clock. This wooden device consisted of a series of connected small same-sized boxes. Each box held a different fragrance of incense. By knowing the time it took for a box to burn its supply, and the order in which the …
Consequences
This was excerpted from The Last Stand by Nathaniel Philbrick, ©2010. He was writing about the difficulty in finding accurate historical depictions when taken years after an event, but he could just as easily have been writing a treatise on karma: “We interact with one another as individuals responding to a complex haze of factors: …
The Pinnacle of Evolution
“Each people is, I believe, inclined to believe it is the purpose of history, that all that has happened is leading to the now, to this world, this country. Few of us see ourselves as fleeting phantoms on a much wider screen, or that our great cities may someday be dug from the ruins by …
Changes
Adolf Hitler wasn’t born evil, he became evil. He didn’t always want to be a dictator. When they left him alone, he wanted to be a painter. Then World War I happened. He was drafted and assigned the job of litter-bearer, and spent the next several years searching among anguished and mutilated bodies for the …
Obey
“Historically, the most terrible things– war, genocide, and slavery– have resulted not from disobedience, but from obedience.” ~Howard Zinn
Chang and Eng
Excerpted from The Two, the biography of the original Siamese Twins, Chang and Eng Bunker, by Irving and Amy Wallace, ©1978: On another visit to Philadelphia, the fact that the twins were genuinely united saved them from a fine or jail. A spectator, shaking hands with Chang, squeezed his hand painfully hard. Immediately, Chang punched …
The Outward Sign Of Inward Grace
In this excerpt from Americans: A Book of Lives, ©1946, Hermann Hagedorn describes the business environment of Theodore Roosevelt’s America: To these men the rapid development of the country seemed a definite good in itself and became, indeed, a kind of religion, not superseding so much as fulfilling the Christian principles on which most of …
Lens
“Of all forms of slavery there is none that is so harmful and degrading as that form of slavery which tempts one human being to hate another by reason of his race or color. One man cannot hold another man down in the ditch without remaining down in the ditch with him.” ~Booker T. Washington …
Phonograph
In this excerpt from Americans: A Book of Lives ©1946. Hermann Hagedorn describes the moment Thomas Edison first tested his new invention to record and play back sounds: Three weeks after his interest had first been stirred, he (Thomas Edison) handed his chief mechanic a rough sketch of a queer-looking instrument, including a metal cylinder …
Special
If you could travel back in time and kill Hitler as an infant, would you? I’ve been asked that question before, and my answer is always “It wouldn’t matter.” The question presupposes that Hitler was a remarkable, irreplaceable human being, and I don’t think that’s accurate. I think he was an idiot. And in an …
Misguided
In this excerpt from Huey Long by T. Harry Williams, ©1969, Huey Long explains why he did not fight in the First World War: “I did not go into that war,” he proclaimed in the Senate. “I was within the draft age. I could have gone, except for my dependents. I did not go because …
A Horse
Excerpted from Huey Long by T. Harry Williams, ©1969: The story seems too good to be true– but people who should know swear that it is true. The first time that Huey P. Long campaigned in rural, Latin, Catholic south Louisiana, the local boss who had him in charge said at the beginning of the …
Abbie's Tree House 