Impermanence and continuity
Academe (where a weathered historian shares)
Back when students used to take history courses,1 it was fun to come up with oddball themes and assignments and to see how they resonated, or not, with a fully enrolled class. Now it’s difficult to get a statistically significant number of students in any such “experiment.” But maybe those oddball themes can help bring students back to History.
Going through some books recently, a pile of index cards fell out of one book. Yes, I use index cards to track sources. Don’t knock it ‘til you try it; don’t try it unless you’re willing to consider committing to the system because it will grab you.
The theme of the cards intrigued me: death. And then I remembered, I had created an assignment about death practices and landscapes for a world history survey class once. One of the cards told me that the goal of the assignment was “to understand that cultural practices are not solely social constructions but that the physical environment can play a role in societal developments. Also, that historians rely on archaeologists and anthropologists sometimes." It also had the goal “to get students to ask: where did humans get the idea to do that?”
The multi-week assignment started with a lecture about a few death customs. Here’s the map that went along with that lecture.
If the assignment interests you, you can see it by clicking here.
Death reminds us that nothing is permanent. Humans have been contemplating death for a very, very long time.
With Critters, It’s Personal
The baby bunnies have scattered. The last I saw of them, they were hiding in bushes in at least three places in the yard to avoid Ande. I often knew they were there only because Ande could smell them and tried to flush them out. She never succeeded.
The toad is back this year. She’s hiding in her favorite spot under the downspout’s splash block again, which means the grass is growing particularly long around the splash block since the lawn mower is not allowed to go too near it. She must find a good supply of bugs and whatnot under there. I know she stays cool under there.
Prey and predator. Hiding and hunting. It is the eternal struggle in which all beings engage.
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2018/11/27/new-analysis-history-major-data-says-field-new-low-can-it-be-saved