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PARENTAL ADVICE FROM THE HISTORY OF ALL PARENTAL ADVICE

Parental advice is best served as a hand-me-down plate. That is, tell your kids what your parents told you so they’ll know what to tell their kids. Sound complicated? It’s not. Instead, it is listening, listening and understanding. It goes like this:

EVIL HISTORY IS TOO PAINFUL FOR STUDENT READING?

Evil history includes a list of everything you wish you’d never heard of. It’s the story of man’s injustice to his fellow man, and woman, and non-binary person. If you’ve lived long enough, you’ve heard some evil history; add a few more years and you’ve lived some of it, and the aftermath. Everyone has a […]

HISTORY MATTERS WHEN YOU’RE NOT LOOKING

History matters more to history majors? We like to think so, but history matters to everyone else, too. It matters with personal history, house history, town history, business history, and the big history between nations. The key to remember is that it always starts small. And it starts with one question: What happened?

LIFE STORIES: WHEN PERSONAL HISTORY IS NOT ENOUGH

Life stories come in every form and flavor from hot to cold, bland to sassy, truthful to made up. Tell the same stories long enough to the same people and they start to wonder: “How many times have we heard this stuff?” “Do they know they’ve told the same story over and over?” If you’ve […]

FAMILY VALUES: HOME HISTORY IN MEMORIES

The term Family Values gets tossed around often, so often the definition changes. After the events of January 6, I questioned family values in general, American family values in particular. Since we all have different values, different family values seems likely. There were no lock step in my family values growing up and I didn’t […]

RED BROOM FOR SWEEPING 2020 HISTORY

When a big red broom makes all the difference: W.C Fields said, “I once spent a year in Philadelphia. I think it was a Sunday.” He’s got the time-bender figured out better than Einstein after 2020. Has your world felt like a Philadelphia Sunday this year, too? If you read blogs for new ideas, here’s […]

SOFT AMERICA FLUFFS HISTORY AND LIKES IT LIKE THAT

What turns hard America to soft America? It starts with a poor role model for hard America, when a soft man portrays a tough guy. An aging man can be a comfort when they share the wisdom of experience, when they show up on time and ready to go, when they take their age into […]

HISTORY LESSONS? WHO SKIPPED THAT CLASS

History lessons come the hard way. All the dates and names pile up. We give up on history, and stop paying attention when history reads like a phone book. But once the connections hit and we start linking names, dates, and places, we seek out history lessons. I walked between the Portland Art Museum and […]

SORTING HISTORY: WHAT MATTERS vs WHAT MATTERS MORE

Sorting history is the difference between hoarders and historians. If there were no difference, every garage full of crap would be a museum. And I say garage full of crap with all due respect, since I’ve got one piling up. In the end, that stuff tells a part of our story. But it doesn’t have […]

HOPEFUL HISTORY THE OREGON WAY

Opening a book to find hopeful history is pure folly. It’s not history if all the good and bad parts get the whitewash treatment. Too often Oregon history is a mashup of wagon trains and farmers, of noble people of the land, salt of the earth, staking out new ground on behalf of their godly […]