Wisdom, Knowledge & Equity for Cultural Heritage, Public History & Museums

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1949 and 1951 Observations from Lebanon about Israel and the Palestinians

May 14, 2018

Today the US embassy opens in Jerusalem and tomorrow Israel celebrates its 70th year as a reconstituted modern state. The news is filled with pictures of violence between the Palestinians and Israelis on the border between Gaza and Israel. The contest between Israel and the Palestinians has never found a peaceful, mutually acceptable solution. Perhaps it will be of interest to consider the initial observations of an American missionary who was in Lebanon at the beginning of the dispute. On June 3, 1949, the Rev. Albert G. Edwards wrote a letter to the Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions from the American Mission, Al Mina, in Tripoli, Lebanon, in which he contributed his unique perspective on "developments" in the Middle East. Edwards, grandson of the A.G. Edwards who founded the St. Louis-based brokerage firm by the same name, had spent the majority of his missionary career in Persia (now Iraq) and Iran. After serving in Brazil during World War Two, he and his wife, Marie,...

Liminal spaces between cultures and museum interpretation

May 01, 2018

Liminal spaces between cultures are mysteriously ambiguous. They expand and contract like tides controlled by some utterly unlikely moon. I think that they must be occupied if they are to function, perhaps like quantum particles must be observed lest they wave with their own frequency, ethereal winds you can see but not capture. When abandoned, they narrow to thinly drawn borderlines. When inhabited, they spread as if inscribed in a rubber band. Hardly any scholars have been lured to enter them because they rebuff dialectics and syntheses. Homi K. Bhabha, James Clifford and Edward Said are three of the pioneers aided by the poetics of Edouard Glissant. From their work, I can offer six preliminary characteristics of liminal (inter-cultural) landscapes. 1) They contain overlappings, borrowing, and coexistences. 2)They employ creolization techniques by using local and vernacular vocabulary and viewpoints; offering counter- politics, counter-imaginings and counter-metaphysics; and for...

Thinking visually

April 14, 2018

I am fascinated by visual cognition. In 2015, I wrote an editorial for Museological Review (University of Leicester's Museum Studies PhD Department's peer reviewed journal) about it. I quoted Temple Grandin, Nick Sousanis and from Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences. My doctoral dissertation utilized a visual methodology based on the photo-voice work innovated by Claudia Mitchell. Not only does this subject fascinate me from an academic perspective, it has been important to my relationships with an assortment of people who are important to me and who, because they have been diagnosed to be on the Autism Spectrum, as Temple Grandin explained her own meta-cognitive processes, "think in pictures". Then I had a stroke and was recommended to read the experiences of a neuro-scientist, PhD, Jill Bolte Taylor, whose book, My Stroke of Insight , documents her own severe brain-bleed that disabled the left hemisphere of her brain for some time. That is the area of th...

Old Appleton

April 08, 2018

In 1793, Spain granted twenty-five square miles in southeastern Missouri to the Shawnee Tribe. Their largest town, originally called Chillicothe, was located on Apple Creek. Today, teenagers from the region drive to Old Appleton on hot summer days to sneak jumps off the bridge. No sign remains that this was a major Shawnee settlement for some twenty years. No historic marker notes that Tecumseh's relatives lived there or that he likely visited more than once. No roads retain tribal names. No extant buildings or graves seem to have the preservationists' attention - at least from what can be seen from a driving tour of the area. Instead, later American structures lie empty and collapsed.

Posing Questions Triggered at an American Historic House Museum

January 28, 2018

Henry Clay, Sr - Photograph from Wikipedia by Unknown An eighteenth century monument towers over The Lexington Cemetery in Lexington, Kentucky from above the grave and sarcophagus of Henry Clay, Sr. who was widely celebrated for his role in brokering the Missouri Compromise. He was even nicknamed "The Great Compromiser". While he ran for president several times, he never succeeded in winning the office but he did serve as the ninth United States Secretary of State under President John Quincy Adams. He lived some twenty miles from Cane Ridge when that great awakening and revival shifted identity and faith for thousands of people in Kentucky and in much of the United States. He never wrote about it nor is he known to have attended any of the meetings. He did, however, maintain a fierce loyalty to Freemasonry, leading its growth in Kentucky, becoming the Grand Master of the first lodge west of the Allegheny Mountains. He said, "I would not renounce or denounce Mason...

Penrith Museum - A Well-done Local Museum

November 22, 2017

The Penrith Museum is located in the Visitor's Centre in the historic district of this British town at the entrance of the Lake District. Tourists go there to get brochures, directions and to orient themselves for their visit be it via bicycle, car, train or on foot. There is no fee to peruse the museum in the back and upstairs but, for those who do, it is an example of a very well done museum, indeed. Small but concise, this museum displays the community's past and present in a way that introduces itself to its visitors while also honoring its own who, what, where, when and why's. The collections are eclectic including art created by people from Penrith, important historical artifacts, stories about local celebrities past and present, archaeological findings, photographs, rocks, gems, fossils and even butterflies. It manages to answer what makes Penrith a unique place on earth. It connects local people and places to much broader historic figures and events. It celebrates h...

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