Connecting to the Future
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Michael Dykema
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Heading out to the Picasso exhibit, I was somewhat apprehensive. Modernism and Cubism and all the 20th century movements in art tend not to do much for me, with their preoccupation with abstraction and shape, rather than narrative. I was also a bi...
Walking around the Court of North Carolina, Cliff and I were struck by the paucity of seating opportunities along the south side of the space. There was but one bench, situated in a poorly drained spot next to a ventilation system exhaust. It look...
When I entered the MAT program at NCSU and started looking at history courses to take, I soon decided that I wanted to take a course on the colonial history of America, mostly to add some breadth to my European-oriented knowledge base, as I had la...
Reading about attempts to convey history in spatial terms, I was reminded of http://tipstrategies.com/archive/geography-of-jobs/" target="_blank">this map, which I had come across some time ago. It illustrates the progression of job gains and loss...
I do not remember Hollywood movies being used very often as a teaching tool when I was a student. Generally, if we were watching a movie, it was because half the teachers had been snowed in in Westchester and we were being herded into the auditori...
Cool. I never played that particular game, but I did play the original colonization back in my youth. van der Donck didn't make that version. I think the main Dutch guy was Michiel de Ruyter.
Good post and quite on an interesting historical figure. It's telling that van der Donck seems to remain somewhat obscure. Perhaps there is a Dutch bias at work??
I Googled "Laurascudder" and found a lot on the Laura Scudder potato chip maker. Wo...
Very interesting review. I am inserting the image of Luther you mentioned above. It certainly makes for an interesting contrast. I suspect our modern day view of Luther is very much wrapped up in one's personal religious experience. The reading of...
I thought you did a very thorough yet neat reading. I appreciate both your reflexive and oppositional readings. I too am dismayed at the tone of contemporary political discourse and am oddly comforted to see that its not just our society that is r...
I find the words which Lincoln speaks to be somewhat perplexing. They seem to be in Irish dialect (the "begorra," certainly), which seems more than a bit peculiar, considering that (A) Lincoln was not Irish, (B) not from a place that was particula...
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Heading out to the Picasso exhibit, I was somewhat apprehensive. Modernism and Cubism and all the 20th century movements in art tend not to do much for me, with their preoccupation with abstraction and shape, rather than narrative. I was also a bit leery of the poetic angle to the exhibition; I'm not really a poetry guy either, as I find the form to often be excessively elliptical. And, while there was certainly plenty of unsettling Cubist art and incomprehensible poetry (Picasso's own poetry wa… Continue
Posted on November 30, 2009 at 5:06pm —
The Straitjacket Of Design
Perhaps the first field to which scientific architectural design was applied was the construction of military fortifications. With the elaboration from simple castles into complicated ones and, eventually, elaborate fortifications, which tended to be star-shaped to expand the field of fire available to defenders. Many of the earliest examples of design on the Designs for Democracy website were just such military structures. In a military context, precision and regimentation make sense. However,… Continue
Posted on November 23, 2009 at 6:27pm —
Fountain Of Untruth
Tony Horwitz's treatment of Juan Ponce de Leon's discovery of Florida is essentially a thorough debunking of the colorful, but utterly unsupported legend, retailed in histories for centuries, that the main motivation for the expedition was the search for a secret fountain which restored the youth of anyone who drank from or bathed in it. Anyone with even a passing familiarity with the gold-hungry Spanish conquest of the Americas would look askance at such an implausible tale, but this story gain… Continue
Posted on November 23, 2009 at 5:00pm —
Cynical, But Not Cynical Enough
When I entered the MAT program at NCSU and started looking at history courses to take, I soon decided that I wanted to take a course on the colonial history of America, mostly to add some breadth to my European-oriented knowledge base, as I had last taken a wide-focus American history course when I was still in high school. I think of myself as a pretty critical thinker when it comes to the study of history. I certainly do not go in for hagiography of the early explorers or the Founding Fathers.… Continue
Posted on November 16, 2009 at 4:05pm —
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