His presidential candidacy was cut short. But, for a while, you can still view his portrait at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C.
At least someone in that town still has a sense of humor.
Stephen Colbert, now at the National Portrait Gallery
February 3, 2008
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Art, Elections, Humor, Museums | Tagged: Elections, Entertainment, Humor, Politics, Stephen Colbert | 
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Posted by Ed Darrell
Texas teachers: 9th Legacies Dallas History Conference, January 26
January 20, 2008You’re not registered yet?
Students learn history best when it affects them directly, or when they can see the stuff close up. The Legacies Dallas History Conferences focus on history in and around Dallas, Texas. This is prime material for Texas and Dallas history, economics and government classes.
The 9th Annual Legacies Dallas History Conference is set for next Saturday, January 26, in the half-day from 8:30 a.m. to 1:10 p.m: “Dallas Goes to War: Life on the Homefront.” $40 for nine presentations — or $100 brings an invitation to schmooze with the presenters on Friday night, before the conference. The conference will be at the Hall of State at Fair Park. The conference was assembled by Dr. Michael V. Hazel.
If you’re teaching at a high school or middle school in the Dallas area, print this off for every social studies and English teacher at your school, and pass it out to them Tuesday (or Monday if you’re open then).
Many of the conference presentations roll down that alley of a topic most Texas students need more of, the events around World War II. One session dives into Vietnam, one goes back to the Civil War, and World War I is remembered.
Bob Reitz, the public historian who curates the amazing Jack Harbin Museum of Scout History at Dallas’s Camp Wisdom, alerted me to the conference with a plug to his colleague’s presentation. Anita Mills-Barry will present her paper, “Homefront Scouting During World War II: Participation by Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts in the Civilian Effort in Dallas County.”
A copy of the web invitation to the conference below the fold.
1 Comment | Capturing history, History, Museums, Texas, Texas history, Vietnam, War, World War I, World War II | Tagged: Boy Scouts of America, Education, Girl Scouts, History, Teacher CEUs, Texas history, World War II | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
20th century sailing ships
January 12, 2008There’s a fun blog, Tugster: A Waterblog, that usually features photos of tugs that ply the waters around New York City. Good to wonderful photos; and I’ve been hoping for a reason to mention the blog.
Here’s one: What do you see peeking through the trees and wires?
It’s the masts of the barque Peking, a sailing ship built for a German shipping company in 1911 — the same year the Titanic was built. This was a freight hauler, used originally to take nitrates mined in South America to Europe.
After a relatively long sailing career, the ship has been retired as a museum ship at the South Street Seaport Museum (a great place to visit when you get to New York). It’s in dry dock right now, which is where these photos were taken.
Tugster points to a lot of details, with several photos. It’s interesting to see a ship of the vintage of the Titanic, out of water. It’s interesting to see one of the faster sailing ships, especially one built for use in the 20th century. You can see how the technology of ships and shipbuilding allowed for faster sail vessels; this is part of the story of how technologies get eclipsed, too — when sailing could no longer keep up with steam, advances in sailing ships slowed to a stop.
This was one of the last, fast sailing vessels built — one of a chain of “flying P-liners.”
Get on over to Tugster and see what you can do with the photos, and the history.
4-masted barque Peking under sail, in the River Thames, unknown year. The ship was originally named Arethusa. Wikimedia photo
5 Comments | Capturing history, Geography - Economic, History, Museums, Technology, Transportation, Travel, World War I | Tagged: Barque Peking, Economics, foreign trade, History, sailing ships, South Street Seaport Museum, Technology, Tugster | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Millard Fillmore at the National Portrait Gallery
September 11, 2007Part of the Smithsonian Museums, the National Portrait Gallery remains one of my favorite museums in Washington. It is off the Mall, tucked away at Eighth and F Streets, NW, D.C., (above the Gallery Place-Chinatown Metrorail station – Red, Yellow and Green lines). Free admission, great art, but far enough out of the way to almost guarantee no crowds.
If you Google “National Portrait Gallery,” you also get the gallery of the same name in London, which is not part of the Smithsonian. Another great gallery, but don’t confuse the two.
My continuing search for images of Millard Fillmore turned up this one at the NPG:
The artist is unknown. It’s oil on canvas, and rather a specialty of the NPG — it’s not the official White House portrait. Some of the portraits of presidents come with cheeky commentary or history, since they are not the official portraits usually approved by the president in question himself.
Fillmore’s portrait by an unidentified artist dates from about the time he retired from the House of Representatives in the early 1840s. In the years following, he devoted himself to reconciling the growing differences among fellow Whigs in his native New York State a task for which this hulking and amiable politician was well suited.
“Hulking?”
Check out the other president’s portraits for a usually different view (Lyndon Johnson hated the portrait the NPG has of him, and Richard Nixon never looked better, nor Thomas Jefferson younger); see what else is there that you might use in the classroom.
The NPG has the added advantage of being a short walk from Washington’s China Town, where we used to dine happily at a restaurant named Szechuan, when such cuisine was rather new in the U.S. Several eateries in the area feature dim sum on Sunday mornings, for those days one would rather commune with good friends over delectable tidbits and a good Sunday newspaper, instead of sitting in a pew. Debra Winstead, a former colleague from the University of Arizona, introduced me to the joy of dim sum in D.C. a few years ago.
Good art, good food, good friends. No wonder Washington is such a livable city these days.
2 Comments | History, History and art, History images, History museums, Millard Fillmore, Museums, Travel | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Slave narratives in Flash animation
August 31, 2007Wow!
Teachers, take a look at this Flash animation about slavery, from the Museum of African Diaspora (MoAD) in San Francisco. Yes, that beautiful, distinctive narrator voice is Maya Angelou — this is a high quality, high-impact presentation.
This MoAD piece, “Slave Narratives,” gives a glimpse of the potential of on-line learning, and what can be done with computers to supercharge a subject. Here slavery is presented as not only a colonial American problem, but is instead carried on through salvery issues in the 21st century. It’s part of the MoAD “Salon,” a site that world geography, world history and U.S. history teachers need to visit right away.
Cyberspace Nova discusses the site in a quick review of recent great Flash animations:
Imagine how it looked like taking a people freedom, torturing them, killing them and moving them far far away from their home. Tears can follow very easily if you just put one picture on your mind how it looked like. Yet, Slave Narrative put thousands of pictures in front of your eyes if you listen to the stories of slaves who lived to write them and share with people that will live after them. Let’s never forget this, because it’s happening today, like some stories from Slave Narratives tell… I love that this site is done in Flash, it is so powerful, it tells a story that we cannot hear a lot… Narrative part not just only justifies use of Flash, whole interactivity makes it great. 5/5
Also look at this photographic exhibit of from MoAD, featuring more than 2,000 photos of people of African descent and places and things important to them — again, with great flash animation.
Bookmark the home page of the museum while you’re there.
1 Comment | Education, Geography - Economic, Geography - Political, History, Human Rights, Museums, On-line education, On-line learning, Slavery | Tagged: Africa, Education, geography, History, Human Rights, Museums, On-line education, On-line learning, Slavery | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Arco, Idaho: Stop and see the first peaceful use of atomic power
August 20, 2007Nils Ribi is a city councilman in Sun Valley, Idaho, who blogs (public officials who blog, really, is probably a good trend).
Ribi urges that if one should find one’s self driving the highways of Idaho, one might want to stop at the nuclear reactor where electricity was first generated — the first peaceful use of atomic power in the world.
If you are driving the highway between Arco and Idaho Falls, take the time to stop and visit the EBR-1 site that is open to the general public. In 1951 it became the first power plant to produce electricity using atomic energy. It has been nicely restored as a historical site and is well worth the stop, although it is not quite like looking into an operating reactor. The kids will enjoy it too.
His blog features photos of recent forest fires in the area, some of which are starkly beautiful.
Photo of helicopter fighting the Castle Rock Fire near Sun Valley, Idaho, by Nils Ribi.
Leave a Comment » | Museums, Nuclear power, Science, Travel | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Sacrificing accuracy and children for art
August 14, 2007Cartoon Brew has an upload of an animated ad for the abominable Creation Museum in Kentucky, Ken Ham’s monument to denial of reality and campaign against science. (I wish I knew how to upload a link here . . . if you have suggestions, pass them along.) Here’s Youtube version:
Yes, it’s nice animation. As art, it functions rather as the opposite of Picasso’s Guernica, though, doesn’t it? Instead of revealing a truth, even a horrific truth, it is art aiding a campaign of deception.
What do you think?
Does biology need to recruit the ghosts of Tex Avery and Chuck Jones to keep pace? Or is this just one more demonstration of the scientific and moral vacuity of creationism?
We still can’t get legal copies of that brilliant Civil War animation from the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum, but we can get crap on television from Ken Ham. It’s just a matter of time before Ham has a slick DVD promo for his museum, mailed to 40,000 high school biology teachers . . . what’s the hurry, and why are we in this handbasket? Going where?
Update: Soyeon Kim, the animator/designer for the commercial, notes in comments that the creators of the ad did not realize it was a creationism museum, since they’d never heard of anything other than legitimate natural history museums. Think of the moral dilemmas: A paying client, versus accurate information. The poorly-paid biology teachers in Dover, Pennsylvania defied their employers and refused to teach creationism. At what point should one simply refuse to go along, even for pay?
1 Comment | Cartoons, Creationism, Evolution, Museums, Religion, Science and faith, Video and film, Voodoo science | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Upon these rocks . . .
July 9, 2007. . . Ken Ham’s creationist museum is established. An amateur geologist/paleontologist in Cincinnati lets the rocks tell their own story. Interestingly, the story they cry out is not the one promoted by Ken Ham.
Tip of the old scrub brush to Panda’s Thumb and P. Z. Myers.
Leave a Comment » | Bogus history, Creationism, Hoaxes, Museums, Natural history, Reason, Science and faith | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Photos of a hoax: The Cardiff Giant
July 2, 2007
The Cardiff Giant was a great hoax of the 19th century. George Hull, a cigar maker in upstate New York, hired a Chicago sculptor to make a large statute of a man. He then buried the statue on a friend’s farm, and year later hired workmen to dig a well where the statue was buried, and of course the well-diggers “discovered” the statue. Hull’s intent was to hoax Bible literalists who talked about giants in the ground, based on Genesis 6:4.When the statue was discovered, it was claimed to be a petrified giant, evidence of giants living in America. The stone piece was put on traveling display.
The hoax was discovered. That only increased the desire to see the statue, and the price to see it was raised. P. T. Barnum tried to buy the thing, and when his offer was refused, initially he created a hoax of the hoax for his own display.
The Cardiff Giant is on display today at the Farmers Museum in Cooperstown, New York (also home of the Baseball Hall of Fame). Barnum’s fake fake is on display at Marvin’s Marvelous Mechanical Museum, Farmington Hills, Michigan.
The photo at top was created with a grant from the Vermont Council on the Arts by David Carlson, whose website is here (his work is for sale — some of the photos would be good conversation starters in history classrooms) It’s a photo made with a pinhole camera, a camera without a lens. The second photo is from Roadside America, showing the Cardiff Giant as displayed today.
1 Comment | Bogus history, History, Hoaxes, Junk science, Museums, Religion, Travel | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Blue Bell’s 100th; ice cream at the Farmers Museum
July 1, 2007It looks like even the Farmers Museum in Cooperstown, New York, wants to get in on Blue Bell Ice Cream’s 100th anniversary, with a display on ice cream in America.
But it’s only coincidence: Cooperstown is outside the Blue Bell distribution area.
Nice idea, though.
Leave a Comment » | Food history, Museums, Texas, Texas history, Travel | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Creation Museum: Sad, beleaguered
June 6, 2007For those of us who worry at every eruption of intentional ignorance, such as Ken Ham’s Creation Museum, the comments of BBC’s correspondent Justin Webb produce a little salve:
There is nothing remotely convincing about the Creation Museum and frankly if it poses the threat to American science that some American critics claim it does, that seems to me to be as much a commentary on the failings of the scientific establishment as it is on the creationists.
And a bit later:
At the Creation Museum, goggle-eyed children watch depictions of the Great Flood in which children and their mums and dads are consumed, because God is cross.
In a nation of kindly moderate people I am not sure this is the future.
I put my faith – in America.
Mencken’s hoax about bathtubs in the White House was innocent enough, but impossible to kill (yet). Ham’s hoax about science, at $27 million (U.S. reports) or $30 million, doesn’t have the grace of its perpetrator confessing the hoax and urging correction (yet).
Faith in America is reassuring, until one remembers P. T. Barnum’s faith that Americans include a “sucker born every minute,” and Tom Sawyer’s assessment of small town politics: ‘Ain’t we got every fool in town on our side? And ain’t that a big enough majority in any town?’
3 Comments | Accuracy, Bogus history, Creationism, Evolution, Intelligent Design, Museums, Natural history, Science, Science and faith, Voodoo history, Voodoo science | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Millard Fillmore's Bathtub 