Any Human Ever: one life from over 100 billion Is possibly one of the best teaching tools I’ve ever seen on the internet. The concept is simple. There have been about a hundred billion humans to have ever lived. We each are occupying one of those lives, but what would it have been like to be another life?
What a beautiful website & a beautiful reminder of the absolute abundance that many of us live with compared to our very recent ancestors – https://ordinaryabundance.com/
Over the past few years, I’ve been able to visit a few of America’s National Parks, Wildlife Refuges, and other public lands in addition to reading several excellent histories. For the Parks that I’ve visited so far, it seemed like there was an outsize influence of either single individuals or small groups in getting the Park established.
Exhibit 5000+ that Jimmy Carter was a brilliant President & was deliberately slandered by Ronald Regan -> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heritage_Conservation_and_Recreation_Service
The premise is straightforward: if history happened in real places, you can go stand in those places. And when you do, history stops being a mental movie and starts feeling like what it actually was — real people, real terrain, probably a lot more boring and weird than your imagination gives it credit for.
In the main hall of the Library of Congress, there are 8 virtues listed on the walls.
I picked up Jesus and the Disinherited by Howard Thurman after a weekend that included visiting the Martin Luther King…
Efforts to bring back the American Chestnut have been slow but steady. And I was surprised to find a planting at none other than the Atlanta History Center! It’s not as old or as established as the ones at Allatoona Dam, but they seem healthy and strong. They are a fun little Easter Egg tucked inconspicuously in the very back of the Center’s property near The Wood Cabin.
Perkins may have had more direct impact on the everyday lives of ordinary Americans than almost anyone else in the 20th century. The 40-hour work week. The minimum wage. Social Security. Child labor laws. Unemployment insurance. These aren’t abstractions — they are the literal architecture of how Americans work, save, retire, and survive hard times. Frances Perkins built most of that architecture.
That was a serious underestimate.
A Voyage Long and Strange by Tony Horwitz is a history travelogue that focuses on the nearly 300 years between Columbus’s discovery of America and the Declaration of Independence.
The Three Hares Motif is this weird, fun enigma -> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_hares
I got to see a mature-ish American Chestnut!
Brilliant performance art -> Forty News. Events are important, but the daily news is not the medium to understand them.
America’s National Historic Trails is a lovely coffee table book that covers some of the hidden gems of America’s recreation & preservation systems (i.e., lesser known than the National Park system or National Scenic Trails system)
Mail processing automation killed off mailcars…a major source of revenue for US passenger rail.
I got to visit Bunker Hill in Boston. Like so many other historical markers, especially in urban areas, it’s almost surreal to see the the spot that you hear about since childhood.
It had been loaded the evening before at our door, half a mile from the river, with potatoes and melons…
Nixey’s “The Darkening Age” reveals how Christian zealots systematically destroyed classical civilization after gaining power – an excellent, well-researched read.
Ohhh…I love this -> Wikenigma – A Website of Unknowns
Thoughtful post on a hot topic -> How Will You Save Small Midwestern Towns without Mass Immigration?
