And, are you ready to celebrate the bicentennial of his birth in your classroom?
Photo: P_________ _______ _______ meets soldiers from the Union forces, following the Battle of Antietam, in Maryland, October 3, 1862. With the man in the hat are, from left, Col. Alexander S. Webb, Chief of Staff, 5th Corps.; Gen. George B. McClellan; Scout Adams; Dr. Jonathan Letterman, Army Medical Director; an unidentified person; and standing behind Lincoln, Gen. Henry J. Hunt. Photo and caption from _______ _______ Bicentennial 2009.
Here is a great exercise in applied geography: “The Sweet Tea Line” at Neatorama, with a link to Eight Over Five with a wonderful set of interactive maps — though, if you go to the Eight Over Five site, you don’t find any link to this particular map (can anyone explain?).
What about regional variations in food, language, customs or commerce in your state? I remember discovering that “regular coffee” in western Massachusetts meant coffee with a lot of cream and sugar. Not so at Boston’s Logan Airport. Where is the line? What about the lines of where a soft drink is “a pop,” versus “a soda pop,” versus “a coke,” versus “a soda?” Read the rest of this entry »
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
Citations get lost on the internet. Not only do people send copies of e-mails to everyone on their list, not only is there spam beyond all measure, but good stuff gets stripped of attribution. Someone sends you a good poem, or a genuinely funny story — and if you want more of the same, you’re completely at sea about where to look. Author? That information got stripped away several forwardings earlier.
“Must be Lincoln, Einstein, or Jefferson,” some wag says, and the piece is misattributed ever after.
A fellow posted this interesting film on YouTube — The Civil War in Four Minutes. One second of the film equals one week of the war. It’s a fascinating pictorial map presentation, with a lot of information packed into 240 seconds.
Who did it? Are there others like it? How do we get the rights for classroom use?
YouTube can be likened to grave robbers who invade Egyptian royal tombs — they bring important material to light, but the context is lost, and perhaps the meaning.
Update, June 15, 2007: Every YouTube version of the video has been pulled — probably a copyright thing. In the interim, I’ve checked with the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum to see if it is available. One person said there is discussion for making it available in the next two years. Ain’t that the way? Why not strike while the iron is hot and sell it now? Somebody, please wake me if it’s ever released.
A history symposium aimed at high school teachers is set for next Saturday, April 28, at the University of North Texas in Denton. Featured speakers include Ft. Worth Star-Telegram vice president Bob Ray Sanders, and Civil War historian Carl Moneyhon, from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock.
Kevin Levin’s blog, Civil War Memory, carried this posting — I stole it wholesale — plugging a conference on the Civil War hosted at Kennesaw State University in Kennesaw, Georgia:
Civil War Conference at Kennesaw State University
The Third Annual Interpretations of the American Civil War Symposium will be held on May 4 and 5 at Kennesaw State University. The title of this conference is “The Struggle Within: The Confederate Home Front.” Speakers include the following:
Professor George Rable (Keynote Address): “Blended History: New Approaches to Studying the Confederate Home Front”
Professor Victoria Bynum: “Guerrilla Wars: Plain Folk Resistance to the Confederacy”
Professor Kenneth Noe: “The Origins of Guerrilla War in West Virginia”
Professor LeeAnn Whites: “‘Corresponding to the Enemy:’ The Home Front as a Relational Field of Battle”
All four of the speakers are top-notch scholars. This promises to be a very exciting and educational conference. For more information click here.
[End of stolen announcement.]
It’s a conference where it’s pretty well guaranteed that no one will bellyache from the podium about the No Child Left Behind Act. Plus, this gives me a chance to plug Civil War Memory, and Another History Blog, both of which deserve your attention and can help you out.
For a transplanted Yankee, I’ve been struck with the oddity that Texas kids don’t know much about the Civil War. Certainly they don’t know what the state wants them to know, and what the state wants is substantially less than any Southerner ought to know about the historic events that still push attitudes and actions in the 13 rebellious states and national politics. Texas history teachers could use a few seminars on the Civil War.
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
Or, until that account is unsuspended by the forces supporting Donald Trump: Follow @FillmoreWhite, the account of the Millard Fillmore White House Library
We've been soaking in the Bathtub for several months, long enough that some of the links we've used have gone to the Great Internet in the Sky.
If you find a dead link, please leave a comment to that post, and tell us what link has expired.
Thanks!
Retired teacher of law, economics, history, AP government, psychology and science. Former speechwriter, press guy and legislative aide in U.S. Senate. Former Department of Education. Former airline real estate, telecom towers, Big 6 (that old!) consultant. Lab and field research in air pollution control.
My blog, Millard Fillmore's Bathtub, is a continuing experiment to test how to use blogs to improve and speed up learning processes for students, perhaps by making some of the courses actually interesting. It is a blog for teachers, to see if we can use blogs. It is for people interested in social studies and social studies education, to see if we can learn to get it right. It's a blog for science fans, to promote good science and good science policy. It's a blog for people interested in good government and how to achieve it.
BS in Mass Communication, University of Utah
Graduate study in Rhetoric and Speech Communication, University of Arizona
JD from the National Law Center, George Washington University
Posted by Ed Darrell 
Millard Fillmore's Bathtub 