Maybe it seems odd to call someone a historian who is not a professor of history giving lectures and writing books. It’s not odd at all. There is academic history, and there is public history. Not really different things, but broadly different ways of engaging with history. “Academics tend to think of public history as…
Old Ballads; Oral History
Milman Parry was a Harvard professor. In the 1930s he traveled through Yugoslavia, collecting ballads and folk songs. As a result of his research into these particular forms of oral history, he developed the idea that Homer’s poems have a formulaic structure that shows they were originally oral compositions. This is one of the stories…
Miss Wolcott’s School Denver
My maternal grandmother, Vivian Luce attended Miss Wolcott’s School for Girls, a finishing school in Denver. She studied things like piano, French, water colors, needlework, elocution, etiquette, and other things appropriate to Edwardian ladies. I estimate she was there about 1914 to 1916. Wikipedia defines finishing schools: “A finishing school is a school for young women that…
Copyright Problems: A Dysfunctional System
We watched Sita Sings the Blues the other day. Haven’t seen it? Picture this. A cartoon that tells the story of the Hindu goddess Sita set to 1920s Blues music. Cool stuff. And it turns out to be a famous instance of copyright problems. Everyone knows copyright can be a pain in the butt but…
Kruse Connections
I’ve mentioned several times lately that the Swanstroms have a yDNA connection to a German Kruse family. And I’ve thrown out a few thoughts, but no real details. Today, just a quick note about what I’m really thinking. The soldier Petter Jönsson Cavat, born about 1732, lived in Gärdserum parish, He’s the earliest provable Swanstrom…