MakingHistory

The second chapter of my recent book, covering the early history of peppermint in America, Ashfield, and the Ranney family.

This week I visited Baudette and International Falls, Minnesota, along the Canadian border. Did some research and met some very nice people as a result.

Since I've changed the name to "Making History", I thought I probably ought to share some of the history that I've made. So I'm going to start reading some of my writing, beginning with the book that came out of my dissertation. Peppermint Kings, A Rural American History, was published in 2020 by the Yale University Press, in their Agrarian Studies series. Since there isn't an audiobook version of this, I thought I'd provide one in podcast form. This is also an example of the type of project I'm working on when I do the note-taking and research I talk about on my channel.

Some thoughts about how I'm going to (re)organize myself to continue focusing on making content for the channel. The main theme will continue to be my work as a historian, writer, and teacher -- making and sharing history content.

My student, Kate Brekke, used Obsidian this summer to begin research toward her Senior Thesis. She demonstrated the graph and talked about her process in my Historiography class this week. Thanks, Kate!

An introductory lecture for my students this fall, to fill in some of the background info that will be useful to help them understand the modern world.

I tend to never be quite satisfied with my course content. This semester, I'm adding some new material and especially some new formatting to my OER World History text.

I'll be using a shared, private Obsidian vault hosted in Dropbox with my Modern World History students again this fall. I'll focus a bit more on knowledge co-creation, too.

A quick recap of my summer activities, including an unexpected visit with a professor who inspired me to study history a couple of decades ago.

Some thoughts on the way I'm going to use Permanent Notes as the abstractions on which I'll build my own arguments, stories, and texts. Also a brief comparison of what I'm doing here with retrieval practice as it's typically understood in education circles.