Comments for consigned to history

Comment on the loneliness of the academic by eb

eb — Sat, 24 Feb 2007 23:53:46 +0000

One of the benefits of blogs, however, is that even as the number of people in your geographical area with whom you can talk about your specialty declines, you still have a chance of linking up to others with your interests online. I’ve found the challenge of having a social life more difficult.

Thanks for your kind words about my long-neglected blog. Your comment reminds me of another thing about academia: responses to what you write can sometimes come at long intervals.

Comment on the loneliness of the academic by rAchel

rAchel — Sat, 24 Feb 2007 13:05:17 +0000

here’s another thing to look forward to. as I advance further and further into academia, I am fatally certain that the circle of people to whom I can coherently talk about my area of specialty will diminish day by day, while the proportion of time consumed by my research will burgeon day by day. there is only one consequence: the swift and inexorable expiry of my social life. loneliness of another sort :) thank you for your musings on history — I’ve been wandering about the blogosphere looking for historical practitioners conscious of their craft.
xx

Comment on about by Ted Coombs

Ted Coombs — Wed, 17 Jan 2007 00:52:59 +0000

I have create a free-content online history wiki and accompanying history blog. I have created a template and added some basic information gleaned from Wikipedia. Wikihistory.org is now ready to have real content added by real historians doing real research, or by enthusiasts who just want to help create the greatest historical archive ever.

Thanks,

Ted

Comment on about by W. Turkell and Nicolas Quiroga

W. Turkell and Nicolas Quiroga — Sun, 01 Oct 2006 22:08:36 +0000

October / 2006

We are interested in learning more about history blogs and in finding ways to promote them. To aid in this effort, we are circulating a small questionnaire and will make the results available in Tapera (in Spanish) and in Digital History Hacks (in English). If you wish to participate, please return the questionnaire to tapera@tapera.info
Thank you very much.

William Turkel – Digital History Hacks – Digital History Hacks
Nicolás Quiroga – Tapera – http://tapera.info

Blog:
URL:
Authors:
First post (mm/dd/Y):

Questions:
1. Which history-related blogs do you visit most frequently? (1-5)
2. What factors do you think are involved in your choice of blogs to read? (For example: quality of information, writing, institution, author profile, rankings, entertainment value…)
3. What factors characterize your own blog? Which are most important?
4. Have you changed the objectives of your blog since you created it?

Comment on exceptable by eb

eb — Mon, 17 Apr 2006 16:35:59 +0000

(My blog seems to be back up today – I couldn’t get onto it yesterday – so I can finally comment.)

I’m American-born – though one of my parents and all of my grandparents immigrated to the US – and I can’t say that I ever really felt conscious of American distinctiveness (as opposed to an American identity, which I’ve always felt on some level) until I had a basis for comparison. I’d been to Mexico and Canada as a kid with my family, but never really reflected on the differences between and among the countries. It was only after going to Europe late in college/after graduation that I got a stronger sense of how the US differs.

I remember, aside from the larger differences like the scale of US power, talking about some little things in particular: (1) how speed limits are national standards in many European countries, but how they vary with jurisdiction in the US; (2) local school boards and the lack of national exams – apart from the SATs and ACT, which are different – for college admissions. I think there’s actually a book about this sort of thing, Banal Nationalism, and someday I’ll take a look at it.

Comment on exceptable by I don't pay

I don't pay — Sun, 16 Apr 2006 02:54:49 +0000

I’m a Canadian-born Mayflower descendant, whose family settled in New Brunswick after the French and Indian War, in which the family had taken part, but before the American Revolution, during which there was sporatic guerilla activity, causing my ancestor’s house to be burned for refusing to join the Revolution. I first encountered full-blown exceptionalism when I moved to the states in 1964 at the age of 12, most notably in my rather miltaristic scout troop. From my standpoint then, on which most of my attitudes have always been based, it seemed ignorant. It was based on the idea, which I knew from experience to be false, that there was no country where this thing or that existed but the US.
So in the Seventies, after Vietnam, the “America as an Ordinary Country” movement was appealing to me.
I think only the scale of American power, ultimately economic, gives American exceptionalism it’s plausibility.

Comment on exceptable by eb

eb — Sat, 15 Apr 2006 04:44:21 +0000

I was thinking more along the lines of sneakily getting a book's content through blog trickery. You know, something similar to reading book chapters online by continually searching for terms that will yield the next few pages – only in this case it would involve writing a post asking for what ends up a defense of chapter 1, then 2, etc.

Comment on exceptable by Eric Rauchway

Eric Rauchway — Fri, 14 Apr 2006 17:33:58 +0000

People who want free books need to have mailing addresses.

Comment on exceptable by eb

eb — Fri, 14 Apr 2006 16:54:21 +0000

This is all part of a ploy to obtain free books.

Comment on exceptable by Eric Rauchway

Eric Rauchway — Fri, 14 Apr 2006 12:50:16 +0000

Between you and Oscar Chamberlain, I’m going to have to re-type my whole book as various semicoherent blog posts.

Comment on what comes naturally by eb

eb — Mon, 10 Apr 2006 02:59:46 +0000

The Apostle Island piece is here. I came across it last December when it was linked from a Slate photoessay I briefly mentioned. I actually had a post about it drafted and ready to publish, but lost it when my browser crashed. I was so frustrated by that and other blog- and browser-related technical problems that I didn't try to reconstruct it. I may get back to it sometime, in somewhat revised form. I need to get in the habit of composing posts using a safer program.

Comment on what comes naturally by I don't pay

I don't pay — Sun, 09 Apr 2006 01:39:19 +0000

Be sure to read the amazing ecological study Thoreau did in Concord in his spare time late in life: “Generation of Seeds” You can download it. A family connection of mine, David Berger, has written a book about it, placing it in ecological context.

The beautiful piece Cronon wrote about human life on the Apostle Islands, which appeared in Orion and should still be available online, seems to come out on the Emerson side in the formulation you’ve sketched above. On the other hand, Leopold, who had been raised and trained in “best use,” became convinced that wilderness was vital to proper understanding–closer to Muir’s understanding.

For me, Emerson has become more-and-more a religious and moral thinker, and a challenging one too. His depths are rarely plumbed and little-guessed-at now. I said as much yesterday on Unfogged’s “Calvinist” thread.