Tag Archives: USM

Days of Death

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I’m taking an anthropology course at USM over Winter Session. These are “compressed” between semester course options. Basically, 15 weeks of work gets forced into an intense four-week offering. Lots of reading, writing, and reflection tacked onto an already busier stretch than I’ve had in probably three years. For a part-time student like me, it’s a way to make progress. “It’s all good,” as they say.

One of our assignments required watching an excellent documentary produced by the BBC on the Mexican Day of the Dead. In a nutshell, this is a day that combines indigenous Aztec traditions about death with the Catholic Holy Day, All Saints Day. Because Americans are rarely curious about anybody else but their own dysfunctional culture, most know little or nothing about this Mexican tradition that actually honors the dead in a way that Americans fall far short in their avoidance of the topic, or their superficial “thoughts and prayers” Facebook contributions.

Once a week since Christmas, I’ve had to respond to one of three assigned student questions we’ve all had to generate from our reading for the class. This week, I tackled this question because death and how we as Americans process it is something I’ve been living for the past three years. Continue reading →

Historical Site Critical Analysis-Maine State Museum

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[The following is my Historical Site Critical Analysis for History 122, a class I’m currently enrolled in at the University of Southern Maine. My choice of a site was Augusta’s Maine State Museum. I visited the site on Saturday, March 23, 2019. –jb]

The Cultural Building in Augusta, which houses the Maine State Museum.

The Maine State Museum in Augusta is one of the oldest state-funded museums in the U.S. The state’s allocation to maintain the museum as recently as 2014 was $1.7 million, which covers 80 percent of the museum’s operating budget. However, this amount is miniscule compared to say a state museum like the New York State Museum, which receives more than $20 million in state-directed funds.

Welcome to the Maine State Museum.

From a document I located online prepared for the Maine State Legislature in 2015, the museum’s chief purpose as a museum and center for learning is to be “the state’s chief institution for presenting and sharing the cultural and natural heritage of Maine, especially in relation to the use of authentic objects.”

I chose to visit the museum on Saturday, March 23, because I’d learned that a new exhibit would be opening that day. Women’s Long Road—100 Years to the Vote, commenced the morning I visited. This, along with the Maine + Jewish: Two Centuries, were two of the museum’s rotating exhibits that change during the year. Both represented elements of 19th century American history, so they would be perfect for fulfilling requirements of this critical analysis.

Both of these “new” exhibits were hosted in large “rooms” on the 4th floor of the museum. The museum occupies a portion of a large structure known as the Cultural Building that also houses the Maine State Library (on the basement level), and the Maine State Archives. Continue reading →

Studying History Part I

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I have been time-traveling this week. History and historians allow all of us the privilege of looking back from where we came as a country and as a people. Thomas Jefferson has just been elected president and the Federalists are “barking” about it. Isn’t it true that the Federalists have always been a political scourge on the nation?

Thomas Jefferson in history.

Jefferson, our third president, wasn’t a perfect man. Is any leader without blemish or fault? History does inform us that his election represented a “victory for non-elites,” those non-Founders who represented the majority of Americans in the fledgling republic. Those damned Federalists once again were lamenting Jefferson and how his election represented a “slide down into the mire of democracy.”

Jefferson’s election was a “victory for non-elites. For Federalists, a slide “down into the mire of democracy.” He embraced “the politics of the masses.” He sought to convince the country that government answered directly to the people—this would lead to unity (national cohesion/union), not division (anarchy). Continue reading →

The Quest for Education

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Don't take my education!!

Don’t take my education!!

In the southern part of the state and mainly greater-Portland, events at the University of Southern Maine have highlighted for me (and maybe a small cadre of others) the challenges inherent in maintaining the status quo relative to higher education.

Is it possible and even feasible given the current landscape of diminishing public resources for taxpayers to be on the hook for what some consider an outdated education model? Along those same lines, is the current statewide higher education complex and namely, the University of Maine system, viable and more important, sustainable? Continue reading →