Well, we’re getting ready to start the fun tomorrow morning at the
Fifteenth Annual Omohundro Institute Conference at the University of Utah. We had a wild ride across Wyoming yesterday–stormy but beautiful, and it’s pretty rainy here, too–seems more like Seattle than Salt Lake, but fortunately, I’m ready for anything. Here are a few little tidbits and
bon mots to keep you amused while I’m otherwise engaged tomorrow:
- In the historical profession, apparently the New York Times is amazed to learn that a faddish new sub-field called women’s history has gained more than token acceptance in the American historical profession. Tenured Radical takes the Times back to school, girl-style. What is this, 1979? 1919? Shhhhh–don’t tell them that Princeton no longer requires exams in Greek and Latin for admission.
- See Zuska’s “The Iron as Technological Art Object: Part II.” Here’s a little flava, inspired by her reading of Jay Raymond’s Streamlined Irons: “Prior to the Industrial Revolution, we are informed, wrinkle-free clothes were only for the wealthy, who could afford the expensive irons and the servants to wield them. The production of cast iron put the cost of irons within reach of the poor. There was now an expectation that people would have well-pressed clothing. This of course made me think: if “people” were going to have well-pressed clothing, women were going to have to press those clothes.” She also writes, “As I read the essays, I wished to myself that I had been offered a history of technology course when I was an engineering student.”
- Dr. Crazy starts a post called “Freaky $h!t” like so: “As if I needed another reason to boycott the Facebook.” Now I’m not sayin’–I’m just sayin‘...
Historiann 
I just don’t friend people I don’t know. I do sometimes wish I could blog my romantic tribulations like Crazy does … but that’s the problem with pseudonymity. Doesn’t protect the guilty.
Left a comment on the NYT at TR’s.
And it is thunderstorming here at BaaRamU.
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Updated weather report: clear and dry on the Wasatch Range as of Friday morning! Lookin’ around for a diplomatic history session… The conference is in an 1860s U.S. army fort, though, now absorbed into a campus non-martius. So there’s lots of military stuff to contemplate, especially the material culture of army domestic life.
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