History and Culture2024-01-31T19:41:30-06:00

This is an Index of Content on History and Culture.

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Ancestry: Governmental Documents: Jefferson and the Declaration of Independence

On the Fourth of July, I often think of Thomas Jefferson, who is an example of the complexity of human nature if ever there was one.  The back and forth interplay of fortune, fate, [...]

Debate and Decision Making: Quotation by Martin Prechtel

Glenda Taylor Comments:  Yesterday morning I read something that was perfect for me personally to hear on the day of the “Great Debate.”  It gave me a delightful and ancient context for our zany [...]

“What We Want, We Have,” an excerpt from Huston Smith’s “The World Religions”

Hinduism and the Meaning of the Self, an excerpt from Huston Smith: “…Pleasure, success, responsible discharge of duty, and liberation—we have completed the circuit of what people think they want and what they want [...]

Ancestry: Contemporary: An excerpt from “Concerning Smoke” by Jordan Paper

“The bowl of the pipe is a sacrificial vessel that itself is a miniature cosmos.  Often tobacco is added pinch by pinch, each explicitly dedicated to the sacred directions as well as [...]

Quotations from Black Elk, Holy Man of the Oglala Sioux

  Black Elk was a holy man of the Oglala Sioux.  The following quotes are from Black Elk Speaks: Being the Life Story of a Holy Man of the Oglala Sioux:     “The Sun [...]

Order and Connection, A Quote from Vine Deloria Jr.

“…From observing the world around them, they could see orderly processes that marked the way organic life behaved.  From the obvious motions of the sun and moon to the effects of periodic winds, rains, [...]

From “What Every American Should Know About Women’s History” by Christine Lunardini, Ph.D.

“When Belva Lockwood was widowed for the first time in 1853, she moved with her young daughter to Washington, DC, in hopes of finding suitable employment to support the two of them.  A teacher [...]

From “Gorillas In The Mist,” by Dian Fossey 

“I spent many years longing to go to Africa, because of what that continent offered in its wilderness and great diversity of free-living animals.  Finally I realized that dreams seldom materialize on their own.  [...]

 From the final chapter of “Woman as Healer” by Jeanne Achterber

“...Sisterhood has been the bond that has held women healers together in the dimmest days of Western civilization...Women healers taught each other the healing arts when training was forbidden and the guilds closed to [...]

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