Sunday, August 23, 2009

THE WAY I GOT STARTED WITH THIS....The UHS at UT Austin did it...


THE WAY I GOT STARTED WITH THIS was by taking part in a
small club at the University of Texas at Austin wherein I was then
employed as a staff member in the School of Music. The club was
"the University History Society". It was basically a club where
special speakers and presentations would be arranged for
members of the history faculty (or others who had an interesting
topic to discuss), and they would lecture or otherwise ruminate
on a subject not directly related to, or included in their classes.
They would then take questions, and this would all be done in a
more infomal setting than one would normally have in the class
-room. This club was open to anybody in the University
community - you did not have to be a history major, or even a
UT student to take part. You had only to be interested in history,
and to show up and listen politely. I'll go into more about the
University History Society
(UHS), and it's ups and downs at
some future point. But I ran for and was elected to the office of
"Secretary" of the club after being in it for a couple of years. I
decided that it might be interesting, fun and a good way to keep
people interested in the club between meetings to put out a
weekly sort of e-mail/ newsletter called "This Week in History"
which would focus on some event that had happened that week
and tell it's story. It turned out to be semi-weekly, as my duties
in the School of Music did not always permit me the necessary
time to research my topic.

I Am Back in Cincinnati and.......

Well flash-forward to the present time. I left Austin Texas and
returned to the Cincinnati area where I had been born and
raised. By the time I left UT Austin, I had written about 55 or 60
such letters, and I was looking for some way to put it all together...
maybe into a BOOK! But various things kept getting into the way
of that. Then during a trip to visit my sister and brother in law in
San Francisco a few weeks ago, my brother in law suggested that I
should do "a blog". I had heard of this medium, but had never
really considered seriously the idea of doing it until then. I
discussed the idea with my sister and continued to think about it
upon my return to Cincinnati. Then I went and saw the movie
"Julie & Julia" and well , here I am! For those who have seen that
fine and fun film, then you know what I am talking about. And if
you have NOT seen it, then DO, and you will understand why I am
here. So much for how and why I got started with this! Tomorrow
- if I can still figure out how to do this, I will go into what I plan to
write, and how I plan to approach it.

Sources:

3 comments:

  1. Well done!

    I will forward this to my kids' social studies teachers.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Great... digital connectivity has truly made it such a small inter-connected world... Keep it up my friend

    ReplyDelete