While taking notes earlier this month at the Soldiers Field Veterans Memorial in Rochester, MN, I couldn’t help but overhear the following from another (rather loud) visitor: Kids should come here and read all this stuff because they don’t teach [it] in school. Yes, and no. (Well, more like: yes, and NO!) Yes: there is … More Commemorating WWII: The Memorial as a Work of Public History
The timing couldn’t have been any better for us to arrive at the slender ‘P’ section in my music collection. But it would take considerably less of an excuse than an unlikely, two-decades-in-the-making reunion in Toronto to get me to listen to one of my favorite albums again… The Replacements, Pleased To Meet Me Okay, … More Albums A to Z: Pleased To Meet Me
My recent tour of about twenty memorials in southern Minnesota (plus one in western Wisconsin) was meant to help immerse me in the era of World War II, which I’ll be teaching next January at Bethel University. But more often than not, what I saw were relics of the 1990s or 2000s, not the 1940s … More Commemorating WWII: Back to the Future
It is now generally conceded that mere shafts of granite and statues of bronze, be they ever so artistic, are inadequate to express the tribute we would pay to our soldiers of democracy. Writing in American Architect in 1919, Martha Candler was about a generation too early to speak for most readers of that journal. … More Commemorating WWII: Living Memorials
When I first started teaching Bethel’s Christianity and Western Culture class, we went all the way from ancient Athens through the 20th century. We’ve since decided that that might be two or three too many centuries for one semester, but I do miss the week where we read through three 19th century Christian responses to … More Best of The Pietist Schoolman: The Love of Libraries
When I first started teaching Bethel’s Christianity and Western Culture class, we went all the way from ancient Athens through the 20th century. We’ve since decided that that might be two or three too many centuries for one semester, but I do miss the week where we read through three 19th century Christian responses to … More The Love of Libraries
150 years ago today, the courts-martial of over 300 Dakota warriors came to an end with convictions for murder and rape. While Pres. Abraham Lincoln commuted most of the sentences, the day after Christmas 1862, thirty-eight were hanged in Mankato, Minnesota. In commemoration, here’s a post on the U.S.-Dakota War of 1862 that I originally … More Best of The Pietist Schoolman: “All have sinned”
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)
This year I’ve written several posts on how the First World War has been commemorated: first a set of four on memorials, monuments, and cemeteries in Western Europe; then a recent series of five on commemoration here in Minnesota. If you missed some or all of the series, you can find the entries indexed here, … More Commemorating WWI in Europe and Minnesota: An Overview
In the shadow of the Mall of America and Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport stand two very different kinds of memorials to Minnesotans’ participation in the two world wars and other conflicts: one the product of design, the other the victim of neglect. First, Fort Snelling National Cemetery, the final resting place of over 180,000 men … More Commemorating WWI in Minnesota: Fort Snelling
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