Ten years ago today, Sen. Paul Wellstone (D-MN), his wife Sheila, his daughter Marcia, and five others died when their small plane crashed en route to Eveleth, MN. Running for a third term in the Senate, Wellstone was scheduled to debate Republican challenger Norm Coleman later that night. It was less than two weeks before … More Paul Wellstone: The Conscience of a Liberal (G.W. Carlson)
One day last month I ran into our university’s president as he was walking to his office, three books under his arm. One, by a member of our faculty, was on the Pentateuch, the first five books of what Christians regard as the Old Testament — the Torah of Judaism. I must have looked quizzical … More “I could use some help with Leviticus”
Here • How technological innovation spread over the course of the twentieth century. I still can’t believe a majority of Americans before the mid-1990s didn’t own a dishwasher! • RIP John Keegan. • More Albums A to Z: Elvis Costello’s King of America. • Did you ever think that Mrs. Doubtfire looked a little bit … More That Was The Week That Was
July 16-17, 1942 – Over 13,000 Jews are arrested in Paris, including four thousand children More than half were crammed into a Paris velodrome known as the “Vel d’Hiv.” There were no bathrooms; the only food came from too-rare visits by Red Cross and Quaker relief workers; and the only water came from a single … More This Day in History: The Rafle du Vel d’Hiv
Here • Celebrating my colleague, mentor, and friend G.W. Carlson — retiring from full-time teaching after nearly 45 years on the faculty of Bethel College (now University). • GW would have been much more articulate (and fiery) than me in explaining why history is a perfectly good field of study for anyone passionate about social … More That Was The Week That Was
Here • I didn’t write as much here as I would have liked because I was grading a set of midterm exams. (More of that to come next week.) But I did pause/procrastinate long enough to complain about grading, so that’s something… • Plus… Why our mission in the Bethel History Department seems in keeping … More That Was The Week That Was
At The Pietist Schoolman I don’t tend to cry in the classroom, but here’s why a lecture on the Holocaust (and the related program of euthanasia that killed hundreds of thousands of children, youth, and adults with physical and mental disabilities) gets me every time. My planned travel course on World War I was approved, … More That Was The Week That Was
I never would have guessed that posting something on my two favorite historical novelists would have generated the kind of response that it did, but let me push my luck by adding representatives of a different kind of historical fiction to my summer reading list. Still jazzed about Tuesday morning’s discussion of World War I … More More Beach Reads
The Pietist Schoolman 