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GRATITUDE 
November 15, 2024 0 17  
Mushroom Madness 
Suzanne Guldimann, November 1, 2024 0  
Fungi can cure or kill, nourish life, and also decompose it back into soil. Fossil evidence for fungi is limited, but the ability to analyze molecular data has led to revelations about the evolution of this extraordinary family of...
Fool’s Gold: The Myth of Tiburcio Vasquez 
Suzanne Guldimann, October 18, 2024 0  
“And still of a winter’s night, they say,  when the wind is in the trees, When the moon is a ghostly galleon  tossed upon cloudy seas,    When the road is a ribbon of moonlight  over the purple moor,    A...
Billions in Flight: Migratory Birds 
Suzanne Guldimann, September 20, 2024 0  
Autumn doesn’t officially begin until the equinox on September 22, but all across North America birds are already on the wing—billions of them. Migration times and destinations vary based on the species and variables like weather and food sources—some...
One-Room Schoolhouse 
Suzanne Guldimann, September 6, 2024 0  
Back to school. A hundred years ago in Topanga, it would have been on foot—and often barefoot—to the little, red, one-room schoolhouse by the creek in the bend of the dirt road.  Public education in California was still relatively...
24 Nov 2024
Books & Such

The Agora 

Jimmy P. Morgan, July 2, 2021 0 5 min read  
My mother is a clinical psychologist who began her academic work a bit later in life than is typical; which is to say, I was raised by a woman practicing to practice psychology. Since she will likely read this,...
Books & Such

MCMLXXIV 

Jimmy P. Morgan, June 18, 2021 0 5 min read  
In August 1974, when I was 14 years-old, Richard Nixon resigned as president of the United States under a cloud of lies and malfeasance. The next month, I began my journey from Cincinnati, Ohio to Southern California under no...
Books & Such

Some Friends of Mine 

Jimmy P. Morgan, June 4, 2021 3 10 min read  
As an introverted and not-yet-so-famous historian, it amazes me that I have been able to develop surprisingly intimate friendships with Absaroka County, Wyoming Sheriff Walt Longmire; Wyoming Game Warden Joe Pickett; Iberia Parish, Louisiana Detective Dave Robicheaux; LAPD Homicide...
Books & Such

1942 

Jimmy P. Morgan, May 21, 2021 0 6 min read  
“In a 2018 poll, over 60 percent of respondents in a citizenship survey could not identify the nations that the US fought in World War II.” —Tracy Campbell In The Year of Peril: America in 1942 (2020), social historian...
Books & Such

Caravan 

Jimmy P. Morgan, May 7, 2021 0 5 min read  
In Central America’s Forgotten History: Revolution, Violence. And the Roots of Migration (2021), Latin America historian Aviva Chomsky makes the clear case that immigration problems on the United States’ southern border are a direct consequence of an aggressive foreign...
Books & Such

Bob Lee 

Jimmy P. Morgan, April 23, 2021 0 6 min read  
In Robert E. Lee and Me: A Southerner’s Reckoning with the Myth of the Lost Cause, historian Ty Seidule knocks Confederate General Robert E. Lee off his high horse. Seidule is a retired US Army Brigadier General and current...
Books & Such

A Science Lesson 

Jimmy P. Morgan, March 26, 2021 0 5 min read  
In Nature’s Mutiny: How the Little Ice Age of the Long Seventeenth Century Transformed the West and Shaped the Present (2017), best-selling historian Philipp Blom documents the effects of climate change on the development of Western civilization.  As recently...
Books & Such

Half of Us 

Jimmy P. Morgan, March 12, 2021 0 5 min read  
The story of America’s founding has been informed largely by the record of the white men of means at its center. During the past half-century or so, however, a concerted effort has been made to account for the experiences...