Because my decision to focus on Wood was as much about keeping myself and potential readers interested in the project as it was about advancing the argument. Because I think that’s important too. /finis
So, if that kind of story or argument sounds at all interesting, this book is for you. And I’d happily talk to any class, school, or community group about the book. And not just about its argument. But also about storytelling or character development. /5
A group whose records serve as the foundation of the Chicago public library’s archive. Such a life provides an opportunity to consider how memory, historymaking, & a racialized politics of nostalgia are just as important to the origins of that thing we call evangelicalism as theology or scripture /4
He served as an usher at Billy Sunday revivals. He attended church w/ Harold Ockenga’s family. We know all of this because in addition to teaching what was said to be one of the largest Bible classes in America, Wood also helped found the first neighborhood historical society in Chicago’s history /3
Wood is like the Forrest Gump of Protestant fundamentalism & the evangelical world that grew out of it. He was in the audience when Dwight Moody announced the formation of the Moody Bible Institute. He heard William Jennings Bryan give his Cross of Gold speech. He was ferenmies w/ Henry Crowell. /2
Ok. Here it is. The one pitch I’ll make for my book. “The Gospel According to Frank Wood” is an 80k word, 220 page book about one Sunday school teacher from Chicago. I know. Saying that out loud gives me pause too. But here’s the thing… /1
My 13yo wears baggy, Junco-like jeans. My 16yo was singing Spin Doctors this morning. The USA attacked an oil rich nation in the Persian gulf.
Time is a flat circle.
I love that you looked this up. The sound is so stable it may be a stationary horn. but nonetheless. had me feeling like a part of a community. a part of the world.
Also, it's probably because I just got tenure...
Sitting in my house on Milwaukee's upper east side reading, & I can hear the foghorn of container ships coming into the bay. A low groan some six miles form my house I can still hear clearly. The sound makes me feel incredibly fortunate for some reason. Lucky to live here. Lucky to be here.
Chicago City Clerk releases recordings of iconic city council meetings going back decades.
www.wbez.org/city-hall/20...
Watching breaking bad for the fourth, fifth? time and just realized that the outfit Walter wears in the last episode of season 2 is the same color of the teddy bear that falls from the sky. As if they are both damaged in a crash.
A photo of a snowy owl on the snowy ground against some reeds.
Saw my first snowy owl yesterday.
who will rid me of this troublesome learning management system.
Anyone else watching Pluribus? I feel like I need a discussion group about the show.
Truly brilliant @rns.org team reporting here from @ulaakuzi.bsky.social, @fiona-ndre.bsky.social and @richakarma.bsky.social:
Inside Zohran Mamdani's bid to win over religious New Yorkers —> religionnews.com/2025/11/04/i...
Yes! Thank you! Thelen, Rosenzweig, and Kelland is like the public history trinity here. So, thank you! I am now ready to fight with the typesetter!
Also, hi!
Thank you! Did not think to look as NCPH. I feel like I learned this from @laraly.bsky.social. So would appreciate here insight too.
🗃️ Hoping for some help with a page proof question. We public historians are ok with using "historymaking" as something of a portmanteau, yes? The typesetter insisted on separating this into "history making," but I feel I've read it combine in other books on memory and #publichistory. Thoughts?
What a line. Aldo Leopold, “A Sand County Almanac” (1949)
“To plant a pine…one need be neither god nor poet; one need only own a shovel. By virtue of this loophole in the rules, any clodhopper may say: Let there be a tree—and there will be one.”
- Aldo Leopold, “Sand County Almanac” (1949)
In the (e)mail today.
“It is fortunate, perhaps, that no matter how intently one studies the hundred little dramas of the woods and meadows, one can never learn all of the salient facts about any one of them.”
Aldo Leopold, Sand County Almanac (1949)
Paging @mjcressler.bsky.social …
“If loons invented the music of being alone, cranes invented the music of being together.”
- Kim Heacox
Thanks! And yeah. And what concerns me is the pressure to adopt AI renders anything other than its use a maker of some kind of Luddite mentality. WHICH IS NOT TRUE! I’ve always used blue books in intro classes. No I worry about their reception.
My god. What a potent (and environmentally appropriate) metaphor. And I think it echoes earlier DH conversations about infrastructure building as scholarship which now feel all the more relevant.
I want to be clear that this is in no way meant to dispel the very real concerns about the intellectual, political, & environmental impacts of AI. But I think "rejecting AI" or "abolishing AI" as some has said is not the answer. But that's a subject for a different thread. Finis. /11
