http://blogs.uww.edu/pastpresent Wed, 18 Nov 2009 18:15:23 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en  Former Czech president Vaclav Havel joins the 20th anniversary celebrations in Prague. Photo from APThe now divorced Czechs and Slovaks are celebrating peacefully together. When Mr Panek and his friends gathered to plan demonstrations against one of Europe’s most hardline communist states, they feared the battle would take years. “We didn’t ... http://blogs.uww.edu/pastpresent/2009/11/18/twentieth-anniversary-of-velvet-revolution/ Norman Borlaug has died after a life spanning 95 years. The life began around Cresco, Iowa, found early achievement as a formidable Golden Gopher wrestler at the the high level of University of Minnesota, and reached a pinnacle at Oslo in 1970, where he was handed the Nobel Peace Prize. His ... http://blogs.uww.edu/pastpresent/2009/09/13/undersung-hero-and-iowa-farm-kid/ The Nation magazine supplies a dead-on example of the way many conservatives are now criticizing the Obama administration. Only the criticisms come from early in the twentieth century. Father Charles Coughlin, a progenitor of today's radio celebrities such as Rush Limbaugh, says of Franklin Roosevelt "So help me God, I will ... http://blogs.uww.edu/pastpresent/2009/09/01/echoes-of-todays-political-rhetoric/ On Aug. 18, 1920, the nineteenth amendment granting women's suffrage was ratified. The blog Edge of the American West  rides on the shoulders of the towering TV feature "Schoolhouse Rock" (ask your parents) to tell part of the story, and adds the story of the final fight for passage in the ... http://blogs.uww.edu/pastpresent/2009/08/20/womens-right-to-vote-an-anniversary/ Taking as his cue the death of the last World War I combat veteran this week, Gwynne Dyer writes a well-done reflection on that war. Mr. Dyer believes the lessons of that war have sunk in deeper than I think they have. It’s almost a century now since anybody but fascists and ... http://blogs.uww.edu/pastpresent/2009/07/29/world-war-i-and-what-weve-learned/ I just had a nice visit with a woman who was an exchange student in East Germany. Here is an insightful essay from a man comparing his time in Hungary before the fall of the Soviet Union with the Hungary of today. When I first visited, as an exchange student in ... http://blogs.uww.edu/pastpresent/2009/04/26/reflections-from-20-years-ago-in-eastern-europe/ A massive U.N. sponsored digital library has come on line, according to the Washington Post. I haven't taken the time to explore, but it looks terrific. http://blogs.uww.edu/pastpresent/2009/04/20/on-line-library-opens-its-doors/ A campaign rally in 1983 for Raul Alfonsin attracted over a million.   The death last Tuesday of former president Raúl Alfonsín from lung cancer has provoked sincere and large-scale signs of grief. Although not as massive as when Evita Perón died in 1952, the public displays of mourning have included lines waiting to ... http://blogs.uww.edu/pastpresent/2009/04/05/argentina-recalls-alfonsin-end-of-dictatorship/ This is pretty good. Here's just a nibble of the history told with living maps from Auschluss in 1938 and on into the Cold War.       Someone has lots of free time and artistic talent, along with their old notes from college. http://blogs.uww.edu/pastpresent/2009/03/14/fun-with-foreign-relations/ I try to work into any relevant history class some mention of the lovable Luddites, the working-class radical movement that emerged in the North England area around Nottingham in the 1810s. The luddites were mostly a type of textile worker called a cropper who used giant scissors to trim the edges of woven cloth. ... http://blogs.uww.edu/pastpresent/2009/02/15/luddites-live-on/