Bleed Into One

I for one want to see this documentary. Enjoy the trailer.

Happy Land - Pa's Filddle Project

Last night we had one of those Nashville moments where we enjoyed top notch musicianship at a free concert. The event was Pa's Fiddle Project - a musical odyssey inspired by the music mentioned in Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House books. Janell has been reading the books to our girls (so far they've read Little House in the Big Woods, Little House on the Prarie, and On the Banks of Plum Creek), so the whole family attended the show at Vanderbilt University. The songlist included Arkansas Traveler/Devil's Dream, Sweet By and By, Money Musk, Highland Mary, The Girl I Left Behind, Old Dan Tucker, The Gum Tree Canoe, Barbara Allen, Captain Jinks, The Blue Juniata, Irish Washerwomen, Oh! California, and On Jordan's Stormy Banks. The project and concert are both products of Vanderbilt's Blair School of Music. They have two cds available (highly recommended). This music is a cross-section of Americana: hymns, sprituals, ballads, bluegrass, etc... and will appeal to historians, lovers of american folk music, and of course fans of the Little House books.

Billy Graham Center Archives

Wheaton College hosts the Billy Graham Center for Evangelism which has a robust archival program that "gathers, preserves and makes available for use unpublished documents on the history of North American nondenominational Protestant efforts to spread the Christian Gospel." I met the head archivist, Bob Shuster, via email through a mutual contact at SIL. He's been offering me words of encouragement as I transition to archiving within a missional context.

The BGC Archives has a wonderful website chock full of informative articles, interesting exhibits, and finding aids to their collections.

I highly recommend these to start with:

Postcard Evangelism, Part I : Humor

"The Zamzam has been a long time in sinking!":The Tale of an Uncompleted Journey

Steyn on History Education

Mark Steyn wrote a piece on Australia's former prime minister John Howard this past December in which he comments briefly on the problems with history curriculum in that country (and in Western Civilization).

.... At his 2006 education summit, Howard called for "a root and branch renewal of Australian history in our schools, with a restoration of narrative instead of what I labelled the 'fragmented stew of themes and issues"'.

As he explained at the Quadrant 50th anniversary celebration: "This is about ensuring children are actually taught their national inheritance." The absence of "narrative" and an "inheritance" is a big part of the reason that British subjects born and bred blow up the London Tube, why young Canadian Muslims with no memory of living in any other society plot to behead their own prime minister.

You can't assimilate immigrants and minorities unless you give them something to assimilate to. It's one thing to teach children their history "warts and all", quite another to obsess on the warts at the expense of all else. The West's demographic weakness is merely the physical embodiment of a broader loss of civilisational confidence. Australia should never have had a "department of immigration and multicultural affairs", but, given that it did, Howard was right to rename it the Department of Immigration and Citizenship. Government should promote citizenship, not multiculturalism....

I encourage you to read the entire article in which he also tackles the threats of global jihadism and compares Howard to Blair & Bush.

As a historian, I do not shrink away from discussing the "warts" of history, but I agree with Steyn that we shouldn't lose sight of the grand narratives. We need to shift the balance away from the narratives of individual identity and re-emphasize broad national and cultural unifiers.

hat tip: Thanks for Noticing Me

Band of Brothers

On June 6, I posted about the anniversary of D-Day and recommended that you watch the HBO miniseries Band of Brothers. I decided to take my own advise and watch the series again. So from June 23 - July 11, I watched all ten episodes and the documentary (first time since 2001). The series was produced by Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks and has the look and feel of their movie Saving Private Ryan (realism, desaturated colors, hand-held camera, grainy film).

Inspired by Stephen Ambrose's book of the same name, the series follows the true story of E Company, 506 Parachute Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division from boot camp in Toccoa, Ga to Hitler's personal alpine retreat The Eagle's Nest. We watch as these men bond together into a fighting unit that jumps into Normandy and fights it way across Europe, but we also see devastating toll the war takes on the unit and its men as they stand against the Germans, the weather, and their own human foibles. This is not just another war movie. It is good drama and a great example of history in film done right. You come to admire these guys. They become a band of heroes before your eyes.

One cool aspect of the series is the introductory interviews with the actual Easy Company veterans and the documentary that is included in the DVD set. A quick Google search also yields menofeasycompany.com where you can learn more about these guys (sadly many of them have passed away in the last six years since the series was filmed).

D-Day June 6, 1944

Today is the 63rd anniversary of the D-Day invasion of Hitler's Atlantic Wall. If your lucky enough to know or meet a World War II veteran. Thank them.

For more info on D-Day check out these sites:
Military History Online
The National World War II Museum
Eyewitness to History
The Eisenhower Library

Also check out these D-Day films:
Band of Brothers awesome series from start to finish and an awesome book too
Saving Private Ryan the first 20 minutes tells it like it was
The Longest Day the blockbuster, star-studded retelling of the event

Sealand for Sale

No its not a water park. It's a sovereign principality (micronation), and according to FoxNews, it's for sale. The "island" was originally built by the British Navy 6 miles off the English coast during WWII. After the war, it was abandoned in international waters. During the 1960s, an entrepreneur moved in and claimed sovereignty - much to chagrin of the British government. Read more of the fascinating history at the official Sealand website and at Wikipedia.

How cool is that? So if anyone wants to loan me a few hundred million dollars, I'd be much obliged ;-)

a little quiz

Where are you right now? Dallas, TX
What are you doing? I’m volunteering/consulting with Wycliffe Bible Translators – helping them establish an archives.
How long will you be there? Two weeks.
Is your family with you? No they are at home and I miss them dearly.

Done anything touristy? Scott came up from Waco and we went to Dealey Plaza to check out the grassy knoll.









What about church? I attended Irving Bible Church with my hosts. It’s the first truly modern, seeker-friendly mega-church I’ve attended. The worship band was very good and one of their elders spoke on the dangers of materialism. Very Cool!

Any good food in Dallas? A group of Wycliffe folks took me to a Pakastani restaurant and my hosts took me to the Original Market Diner on the city's westside.

Are you reading anything interesting? Blue Like Jazz by Donald Miller (thanks Daniel!) This one of my new favorites.

What’s new on your iPod? Mute Math’s “Typical” and “Control” along with some Coldplay from X&Y and Rush of Blood…

What are watching on tv? Besides The Amazing Race which Janell and I closely follow, I’ve been watching Jericho and Lost. Streaming webtv has transformed my lunch breaks.

How about football? Well I’m pretty pleased with UT’s season. I’m so glad that Fulmer has turned the program around.
And the stupid underdog contest? I’m having a great season (17/33 for 100.5 pts. and in the top 100).

POST #100 / David McCullough and the Qualities of Leadership

We'll it took a little over a year to reach this milestone. I have good intentions of blogging more and reaching #200 at a faster pace...

This past week I attended a lecture by the Pulitzer Prize winning historian David McCullough over at MTSU. Overall David McCullough both enlightened and entertained. He began his speech with an amusing anecdote about being asked "Besides John Adams and Harry Truman, how many other presidents have you interviewed?" He also noted that the most striking impression of his only encounter with President Truman in person was the fact that Truman was in color.

The speech was entitled "Qualities of Leadership" and drew heavily upon the author's most recent works John Adams and 1776. During the lecture, McCullough stressed the importance of having a proper sense of history - that our founding fathers had a deep appreciation for classical history and a profound sense of duty to future generations. He also chided our culture for its nostalgic pining for a time when life was more simple. The "Good ol' Days" never happened! September 11 was perhaps the worst single day in our history, but it didn't fundamentally change everything. Furthermore, life in 1776 was not a picnic. For those present in the early days of our nation, the great American experiment was not guaranteed to succeed. McCullough reminded us that the actors in history did not know how their story would end, just as we do not know what the future holds for us today. He pointed out that throughout history, unexpected events often changed the course of history (for example, George Washington's miraculous retreat from Brooklyn made possible by favorable wind conditions that prevented the British from sailing upriver). McCullough also stressed the importance of teachers in our society and encouraged us to make history a priority in the education of our children.

Archives Lost And Found

This story caught my interest because it combines Archives and World War II. The quick summary: a collection of 700 year old manuscripts was recently returned to Poland after being found among the possessions of a deceased World War II veteran in Wisconsin. This story reminds me of a paper I wrote in graduate school on the recovery of art treasures looted by the Nazis during the war. A very interesting and fun paper. The first and third Indiana Jones films were at the very least inspired by the true story.

Visit the Library of Congress

The Library of Congress website provides some excellent multimedia resources from the turn on the twentieth century including video of Presidents McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt. Check it out here.

I used several clips in my class last night. See sky scrapers under construction and street vendors being hustled by New York police. See the wreckage of the USS Maine in Havana Harbor. See the ruins of San Francisco after the great earthquake. Lots of fascinating stuff!

Bethel College

I was asked what the deal is with Bethel College. Here's my reply:

I teach survey American history in a condensed format. Its broken into two classes: History I covers European exploration through Reconstruction (1877) and History II covers The American West (1877) to the 1980 presidential election.

Bethel College's main campus is McKenzie, TN (west of Nashville), but they have a satellite campus here in Nashville. The satellite campuses only offer one degree program (BA in Business) tailored to meet the needs of non-traditional students. Most of the faculty are adjunct. Students are expected to complete a certain number of general education requirements (called College Start) and then work toward their degree.

Most of the students I teach are in college start (meaning they haven't begun work in their major), but I do have students who take history as an elective.

The link on the left will tell you more.