Looking forward to seeing old friends and meeting new ones at the next Mining History Association Meeting in Dillon, MT June 1-5, 2011. Here is a link to the meeting website: http://www.mininghistoryassociation.org/meeting.htm.
The Call for Papers:
CALL FOR PAPERS/PROPOSALS
In 2011 the Mining History Association will meet on the campus of the University of Montana-West in Dillon, near the historic gold rush towns and districts of Bannack, Virginia City and Alder Gulch. The Program Committee invites proposals for papers, presentations and panels on any aspect of mining history in any era or location around the world. Related fields may include science and technology, law and governance, labor and social history, industrial archaeology, business history, preservation, reclamation and environmental history. In celebration of the Idaho-Montana gold rush, 1860-1865, proposals on any mining-related aspect of that era are especially encouraged.
Each proposal should be submitted by e-mail, and contain an abstract of no more than 500 words, along with a brief c.v. that includes the address, phone number and e-mail for each participant. The Program Committee assumes all listed individuals in a session proposal agree to participate. Deadline for submissions is December 1, 2010.
Proposals and inquiries should be sent by email directly to either of the following members of the Program Committee:
Ronald H. Limbaugh, limbaugh@mcn.org
William W. Culver, william.culver@plattsburgh.edu
Cathleen Norman, cathleen.norman@donning.com
Corky Reinhart, corkyreinhart@gmail.com
Please consider joining us. My own experience has been wonderful. These MHA meetings have proved to be great places to share information and research on topics Anne and I are interest in and to learn a great deal from the amazing research done by others. Hope to see you in Dillon this June. corky
Monday, October 18, 2010
Monday, June 7, 2010
Summer Porch Swings
Porch swings evoke so many memories: for me, my grandmother’s porch, hidden amidst the old Dutchman’s Pipe vines (Aristolochia gigantean); seeing but not being seen. Mostly, you have to travel to America’s small towns and byways today to sit and visit with old or new friends. The gentle rhythm of the swing, the creak of the chains and hooks lubricate our tongues, opening our closed interiors to family, friends and strangers alike. We listen a little better, allowing others to interrupt, to join our internal dialogue so often closed to any but our own insistent voices.
Such were the memories and new thoughts evoked by a lovely morning spent talking, chatting, with Linda Gross, the owner of Cedar Hill B&B http://www.cedarhillaz.com/Welcome.html located in the happy heart of the old mining town of Globe, Arizona. Linda came to Globe from corporate America to be with and care for her mother; she stays on to care for herself and to help look after Globe and all the small towns America is doing its best to ignore or discard. We need more folks like Linda, working to restore the small towns, urban neighborhoods, quiet swings and vine-draped front porches of a healthier America.
My wife, Anne, and I were delighted to share Linda’s interest in her small community with its large mining history (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Globe,_Arizona). Linda introduced us to the fascinating role played by Chinese immigrants as mine workers, merchants and shop owners in nineteenth and twentieth century Globe.
For Globe, Arizona panorama, 1917 see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Globe,_Arizona
Evidence of old mining efforts can still be seen on the hills surrounding Globe and its nearby mining neighbor Miami, Az. Likewise, Globe’s historic district still lives and has great small restaurants run by a wonderfully diverse community of peoples. Be sure to visit with Roberta (and her daughters) at the wonderful Mexican Restaurant, Chalo's, 902 E Ash St. in Globe.
Linda Gross can be found most often hard at work as reporter, photographer, layout editor for the GlobeMiamiTimes or taking a breather in her swing at her lovely Cedar Hill B&B (1 -928-425-7530) 175 E Cedar Street, Globe, Az 85501 linda@cedarhillaz.com.
Such were the memories and new thoughts evoked by a lovely morning spent talking, chatting, with Linda Gross, the owner of Cedar Hill B&B http://www.cedarhillaz.com/Welcome.html located in the happy heart of the old mining town of Globe, Arizona. Linda came to Globe from corporate America to be with and care for her mother; she stays on to care for herself and to help look after Globe and all the small towns America is doing its best to ignore or discard. We need more folks like Linda, working to restore the small towns, urban neighborhoods, quiet swings and vine-draped front porches of a healthier America.
My wife, Anne, and I were delighted to share Linda’s interest in her small community with its large mining history (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Globe,_Arizona). Linda introduced us to the fascinating role played by Chinese immigrants as mine workers, merchants and shop owners in nineteenth and twentieth century Globe.
For Globe, Arizona panorama, 1917 see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Globe,_Arizona
Evidence of old mining efforts can still be seen on the hills surrounding Globe and its nearby mining neighbor Miami, Az. Likewise, Globe’s historic district still lives and has great small restaurants run by a wonderfully diverse community of peoples. Be sure to visit with Roberta (and her daughters) at the wonderful Mexican Restaurant, Chalo's, 902 E Ash St. in Globe.
Linda Gross can be found most often hard at work as reporter, photographer, layout editor for the GlobeMiamiTimes or taking a breather in her swing at her lovely Cedar Hill B&B (1 -928-425-7530) 175 E Cedar Street, Globe, Az 85501 linda@cedarhillaz.com.
Tuesday, June 2, 2009
I'm not writing so much as to start a new thread (but you are all welcome to comment here as you see fit)--Afton has got us off to a good start this week--but rather just to say hello as I travel to my mining conference in Creede, Colorado. My friends and I arrived in Jerome AZ last night just before dark. Early enough to take a look around this historic old mining community.Taking copper ore out of this mountain, Jerome was the leading ore producing site in north America for many years until its death in the mid-1950s. From the 50s to the mid 70s it remained a classic ghost town (really nearly abandoned) and then "hippies"move back in and soon "hippies" became artists and a massive restoration was underway. I'm sitting in a little park overlooking the old blast furnace and below me the valley that stretches as far as the eye can see. Jerome is at 5500 feet--a mile high as the local cafe advertises. It is a also described as one of the "wickedist" towns in the west, saloons and brothels marked Jerome's "best" years.
But, like most of American history--and the history of the slave trade--its only when we get closer to we see the interesting and varied threads that make up the whole cloth. I'm off to Creede, another former mining ghost town, to discuss the contributions of a former slave and black man--Fred Coleman--to the discovery and mining of gold in--yet another--former mining town (now restored)Julian California. As these old towns--ghost towns--rediscover their pasts they are also rediscovering the interesting and diverse population of people who contributed to their original development. Fred Coleman's history--his contributions to Julian-- has only in recent years been acknowledged. The slave trade snuffed out millions of lives and disrupted--destroyed the cultural fabric of west Africa, but it also brought (however unwillingly) millions of black people to north and south America--people who have made an enormous contributions to the "American"cultural fabric. From my park bench in Jerome, I wish you folks a good day and fun with your researching and our discussions.
But, like most of American history--and the history of the slave trade--its only when we get closer to we see the interesting and varied threads that make up the whole cloth. I'm off to Creede, another former mining ghost town, to discuss the contributions of a former slave and black man--Fred Coleman--to the discovery and mining of gold in--yet another--former mining town (now restored)Julian California. As these old towns--ghost towns--rediscover their pasts they are also rediscovering the interesting and diverse population of people who contributed to their original development. Fred Coleman's history--his contributions to Julian-- has only in recent years been acknowledged. The slave trade snuffed out millions of lives and disrupted--destroyed the cultural fabric of west Africa, but it also brought (however unwillingly) millions of black people to north and south America--people who have made an enormous contributions to the "American"cultural fabric. From my park bench in Jerome, I wish you folks a good day and fun with your researching and our discussions.
Monday, May 4, 2009
Outstanding Paper Award
I'm proud to report:
Emerald Literati Network
2009 Awards for Excellence
Every year Emerald invites each journal’s Editorial Team to nominate what they believe has been that title’s Outstanding Paper and up to three Highly Commended Papers from the previous 12 months. Your paper has been included among these and I am pleased to inform you that your article entitled Constructing the Cafe University Teaching and learning on the digital frontier published in On the Horizon has been chosen as an Outstanding Paper Award Winner at the Literati Network Awards for Excellence 2009.
The award winning papers are chosen following consultation amongst the journal’s Editorial Team, many of whom are eminent academics or managers. Your paper has been selected as it was one of the most impressive pieces of work the team has seen throughout 2008.
Further information regarding the Awards for Excellence can be found at the following site:
Rum, Slaves and Molasses: Slavery and the Slave Trade in the Americas
Been a little while since I've had occasion to return to my blog and share thoughts with friends and colleagues worldwide. I'm beginning a new online term with students at St. Edwards University in Austin, TX this summer 2009. The course is one of my favorites: Rum, Slaves and Molasses: Slavery and the Slave Trade in the Americas. I love to teach it. The course grew out of my much older, more conventional course devoted to slavery and incidentally to the slave trade offered at several institutions but especially St. Lawrence University the State University of New York at Plattsburgh. After opening an extension of the University Without Walls program (Skidmore College) in the beautiful Caribbean island nation of Antigua and Barbuda my interest sharpened to the African slave trade to the Americas but especially the Caribbean. My wonderful students on Antigua introduced me to new ways of viewing the trade in human cargo and to the languages and folkways left in the wake of the horrific trade in humans. People make the best of difficult, horrible circumstances. The peoples carried off the many coasts of Africa, the African Diaspora, survived--indeed, prospered. Their experience and their survival merit our attention and admiration. I'll have more to say and share as the course gets underway next week.
Friday, October 24, 2008
Ulysses Alfred Lord Tennyson
I cannot rest from travel: I will drink
Life to the lees: all times I have enjoy’d
Greatly, have suffer’d greatly, both with those
That loved me, and alone; on shore, and when
Thro’ scudding drifts the rainy Hyades
Vext the dim sea: I am become a name;
For always roaming with a hungry heart
Much have I seen and known; cities of men
And manners, climates, councils, governments,
Myself not least, but honour’d of them all;
And drunk delight of battle with my peers,
Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.
I am a part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethro’
Gleams that untravell’d world, whose margin fades
For ever and for ever when I move.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnish’d, not to shine in use!
As tho’ to breathe were life. Life piled on life
Were all too little, and of one to me
Little remains: but every hour is saved
From that eternal silence, something more,
A bringer of new things; and vile it were
For some three suns to store and hoard myself,
And this gray spirit yearning in desire
To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.
Life to the lees: all times I have enjoy’d
Greatly, have suffer’d greatly, both with those
That loved me, and alone; on shore, and when
Thro’ scudding drifts the rainy Hyades
Vext the dim sea: I am become a name;
For always roaming with a hungry heart
Much have I seen and known; cities of men
And manners, climates, councils, governments,
Myself not least, but honour’d of them all;
And drunk delight of battle with my peers,
Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.
I am a part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethro’
Gleams that untravell’d world, whose margin fades
For ever and for ever when I move.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnish’d, not to shine in use!
As tho’ to breathe were life. Life piled on life
Were all too little, and of one to me
Little remains: but every hour is saved
From that eternal silence, something more,
A bringer of new things; and vile it were
For some three suns to store and hoard myself,
And this gray spirit yearning in desire
To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.
Thursday, October 2, 2008
Adult Higher Education Conference 2008 Mobile, AL
As usual, another wonderful Alliance conference, this year's held on lovely Mobile Bay in Alabama. Elliott Lauderdale has done a great job organizing the conference well supported by the University of South Alabama. AHEA is by far my favorite conference--always warm and even intimate, fabulous conversations about learning and especially adult learning styles.
This year Alan Mandell, Xenia Coulter and myself facilitated a preconference workshop devoted to the question about the future of "progressive" pedagogy in the digital age. The group of interested and interesting educators that met together numbered about 20 or so, grappling with the question of whether John Dewey and Lev Vygotsky's ideas could be successfully brought forward into the digital learning future. People wondered if Dewey's remarkable insights into learning, themselves arising out of a revolution in thinking (what Morton White aptly called "the revolt against formalism" ) at the turn of the last century (circa 1890s-1930s) could remain cogent and vital in this new age of standardization of syllabi, platform creep i.e. Learning Management Systems, and (too often) objectivist assessment criteria. The impetus for the workshop grew out of a book with the same themes being edited at this moment by Carla Payne longtime Alliance member and retired member of the Vermont College and Union Institute faculty.
Despite the enormous lip service paid to "student-centered" learning, the folks at our workshop raised questions about the real role of "constructivist learning" in the traditional classroom setting where one still sees all too much "straight" lecturing and little meaningful discussion or involvement by students in their own learning. Of greater anxiety to all, was the growing power of "platforms" (LMS) to dictate through their architecture the manner and flow of the learning process. For some persons, concern was also raised regarding the genuine viability of the LMS or even the asynchronous discussion board to create the passion and deep learning sometimes achieved (at its best) by face-to-face discussion. As we argued and debated, pondered these weighty questions it seemed useful to me that perhaps we could use this blog with comments to see how we might use one of the instruments of the digital learning future to deepen and extend our workshop (and conference) conversation and dialogue. So, I invite all the participants of the AHEA Mobile 2008 conference to add your thoughts and ideas to this blog; we'll see about linking this digital and f2f discussion to the AHEA website as well.
This year Alan Mandell, Xenia Coulter and myself facilitated a preconference workshop devoted to the question about the future of "progressive" pedagogy in the digital age. The group of interested and interesting educators that met together numbered about 20 or so, grappling with the question of whether John Dewey and Lev Vygotsky's ideas could be successfully brought forward into the digital learning future. People wondered if Dewey's remarkable insights into learning, themselves arising out of a revolution in thinking (what Morton White aptly called "the revolt against formalism" ) at the turn of the last century (circa 1890s-1930s) could remain cogent and vital in this new age of standardization of syllabi, platform creep i.e. Learning Management Systems, and (too often) objectivist assessment criteria. The impetus for the workshop grew out of a book with the same themes being edited at this moment by Carla Payne longtime Alliance member and retired member of the Vermont College and Union Institute faculty.
Despite the enormous lip service paid to "student-centered" learning, the folks at our workshop raised questions about the real role of "constructivist learning" in the traditional classroom setting where one still sees all too much "straight" lecturing and little meaningful discussion or involvement by students in their own learning. Of greater anxiety to all, was the growing power of "platforms" (LMS) to dictate through their architecture the manner and flow of the learning process. For some persons, concern was also raised regarding the genuine viability of the LMS or even the asynchronous discussion board to create the passion and deep learning sometimes achieved (at its best) by face-to-face discussion. As we argued and debated, pondered these weighty questions it seemed useful to me that perhaps we could use this blog with comments to see how we might use one of the instruments of the digital learning future to deepen and extend our workshop (and conference) conversation and dialogue. So, I invite all the participants of the AHEA Mobile 2008 conference to add your thoughts and ideas to this blog; we'll see about linking this digital and f2f discussion to the AHEA website as well.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)