Inspiring Excitement and Passion about History and the Humanities
In the midst of the stress and anguish in the past Downton Abbey (for those in the US who won’t be seeing it for another 4 months or so, I won’t give away the story – just suffice it to say that my heart was in my throat) a bit of levity was thrown in…
A roundup of my favorite history-related stories I’ve clipped recently! Gladiators: Live Fast Die Young From BBC History Magazine’s HistoryExtra blog: http://www.historyextra.com/article/feature/gladiators-facts-ancient-rome Everybody has ideas about Roman gladiators. They’re a mainstay in movies, and we all have an impression of what it would be like to have to go into a ring and fight another person…
About 7 years ago I went through a Music Drought. Have you ever been in one of those? Months, or even years go by, and you realize that you haven’t listened to anything new, or even anything that you love and makes your spine tingle in ages? Yeah, well, that was me for a year…
Here’s a niche audience waiting for a need to be met: If you’re in the UK, AND you want to hear choral evensong services near you, there’s a new site just launched called choralevensong.org, and it’s a searchable directory of evensong services throughout England. If you’re into choral music, there’s no better place to hear…
History can often seem intimidating because it seems like only the stories of dead white men. And there’s a reason for that. The white men were the ones who kept most of the records, being the ones who were educated and literate, and so they are the ones about whom we know. I am…
When I first arrived in Spain back in June, I wanted to go exploring – Seville, Granada (the Alhambra) – there were very few cities in Andalusia through which I didn’t want to wander. But it was summer. And Europe was in the midst of this awful heatwave. So we planned all of our explorations based on…
Happy 2015! What kind of special foods do you eat on New Year’s Day? If you’re like me and/or you have German ancestors, or you were raised in Lancaster PA, you probably ate pork and sauerkraut today. We had ours. Hannah absolutely adored the sauerkraut. My hubby isn’t a sauerkraut fan, but he ate the…
I’ve been reading The Men Who United the States by Simon Winchester, a history of the US told through the elements of wood, metal, water, fire, and air, which is an interesting lens through which to view history. The wood chapter, for example, was all about when wood was the primary material; the homes the…
I recently discovered the work of Charlotte Salomon. She was a young Jewish artist during the Holocaust, but her work shouldn’t be viewed simply as Holocaust art. To view it that way is to miss the extraordinary poignancy of what she created. I feel bad even comparing her to Anne Frank, because she is so…
Since this blog is sort of like the curated museum of Heather’s Mind, I need to start posting more about music. One of my favorite early music groups is Stile Antico, a polyphonic vocal ensemble founded in 2001. They have a new album out, The Phoenix Rising, which is getting a lot of regular rotation…