20 Mini-Courses So Far, With More To Come

Slender Threads / Global Citizens / Public History E-newsletter and Online Learning Community on Substack. Not mere commentary and opinion. Mini-courses (20 so far), grounded in the study of global and American history and culture, media, what ifs, wide travel, and journalistic experience. Seeking a common understanding of humanity, politics, religion, and the arts, with …

2000th Post Since Mid-2018: Time to Assess Where This Blog Is Going

Today marks the 2,000th post in a row on https://byaslenderthread.wordpress.com since May 28, 2018. It has been a good discipline and sometimes kept me sane as it provided a "place" to go beyond breathless and upsetting headlines of the day and the week, to avoid hysteria, and realize that the U.S. and the world have …

12 Case Studies Using Alternative History in Education

Since about 2010, both high school teachers and university professors have researched the value of counterfactual thinking and experimented with it in classrooms. I’ve followed this trend. It includes the use of history “gamified” through the use of Civilization VI, Rise, and Fall, as a way of teaching the rise and fall of empires and …

Pop Culture Embraces Alternative History, Hits the Modern World’s Zeitgeist

On Substack, I've updated a piece I first wrote on this blog in 2015 about how movies, books, TV shows, and even the news are filled with what-if, counter-factual scenarios. Pop Culture Embraces Alternative History, Hits the Modern World's Zeitgeist. I also posted it to the Alternate History group on Facebook and got a few …

Mark Shields on Politics and the Political Life

"In addition to being great fun, politics is basically the peaceable resolution of conflict among legitimate competing interests," wrote Mark Shields in an essay for National Public Radio in a series called "This I Believe."  "I Believe in Politics," he said. He pointed out that "compromise is the best alternative to brute muscle or money …

How We Are All Related: Genealogy and DNA Tests Connect Us All To History

Studying genealogy and DNA connections begins to make the invisible visible, and reinforces the idea that there are almost invisible slender threads connecting all nations and all of history. “The Invisible History of the Human Race: How DNA and History Shape Our Identities and Our Futures,” by Christine Kenneally. “We are doomed to repeat history …

Re-Interpreting the Founding Fathers For New Generations

In two Slender Threads newsletters, I focus on how America's founding fathers are being reinterpreted for new generations. But Americans born before 2000 or later who encountered old-fashioned, boring, or traditional views of history mainly from the viewpoints of White men will be interested in how to prepare for watching the Alexander Hamilton musical and …

25 Historical Documents in US History: How Many Have You Read?

A legislator in KY seeks to require high school students to read and write interpretations of 26 historical documents. If you have read more than five, you are more knowledgeable than most legislators. Click. "This is the Senate’s attempt to address the whole “critical race theory” thing, but it tries to diffuse the anger surrounding CRT by focusing …

Magical Christmas Observances in the Middle East

I was flabbergasted when two days before Christmas while teaching at a Turkish elementary school in central Anatolia, I asked students about Santa Claus and only received blank and curious expressions. Most didn’t know who he was. I hadn’t heard one Christmas carol or jingle that season – not even a Musak version – and …

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For any friend, family member, student or colleague who likes or needs to know how history shapes the world we live in, consider a gift subscription to Slender Threads -- daily posts; thematic, aggregated, and collated content, individualized Zoom meetings and podcasts. Click. More: Online Course Materials in History, Civics, Social Studies