Tonight Shippensburg University welcomed guest lecturer Wawa Gatheru, a leader in the contemporary U.S. environmental justice movement. She had many interesting things to say, but since I am an historian, I especially appreciated her discussion of how the legacy of American slavery has led to environmental inequity today. Wawa Gatheru pointed to two ways this
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Dr. Timothy May, specialist in Mongolian history, spoke at Shippensburg University this evening. My favorite annecdote was when he talked about the Daoist monk who warned Chinggis Khan that he would live longer if he quit drinking, hunting, and having quite so much sex. The leader of ored the monk, and Chinggis Khan died from
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The Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia is definitely worth visiting. It was a unique and highly influential prison, and the current site now has first-rate displays with the buildings intentionally kept in a state of semi-decay. The ambience perfectly matched the subject. Once the USA’s largest prison, Eastern State Penitentiary opened in 1829 with
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This is the very first Smithsonian Museum building, known as “The Castle,” and it was built in 1855. The founders of the Smithsonian lay a foundation for the 21 museums that make up the US national heritage that exists in Washington D.C. today. There are photos here of the surrounding gardens, built by people who
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I really enjoyed the Freer Gallery of Art’s small permanent collection dealing with the history of the southwestern part of the Arabian peninsula, or modern Yemen. The area has suffered from horrific warfare since 2014, which has endangered much of its historical heritage. This is tragic, because although the area never boasted the wealth of
Belladonna was a poison used during the Italian Renaissance. Sean Carroll’s “Mindscape” podcast this week features Raychelle Burks, who discusses poisons, chemical analytic forensics, and history.
Catch up on how historical geneticists are unveiling fascinating new discoveries about early human history ( example- new discussion about the so-called “Hobbit” peoples from the Indonesia area). _Who We Are and How We Got Here_ is a great read!
Hobbit Peoples Skull Read More »
Exhibit from the NYC Met, where you can see a teensy dragon (if you squint) on the robes of this eastern medieval bishop, showing cultural influences from east Asia.
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Almost 200 years ago (May 7, 1824), Beethoven’s Ninth – and final – Symphony debuted, and yesterday I got a chance to hear it at the First Evangelical Lutheran Church in Carlisle. It took the combined efforts of three groups (the Dickinson College Choir, Cantate Carlisle, and the Dickinson Orchestra) to perform the famously monumental
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At Shippensburg University, undergraduates have many opportunities to do original historical research projects supervised by faculty who are experts in their fields. Here you can see Jared Diehl and Anna Crawford’s poster presentation for the annual 2023 Academic Day, which commences the semester. Anna and Jared worked this summer to uncover whatever sources they could
These are the views of Chimney Top, a Tuscarora quartzite outcropping at the end of the North Fork Trail on the similarly named mountain in West Virginia. Pictures don’t do this place justice – besides the immensity of scale that my photographic skills couldn’t capture, its beauty was enhanced by the wind and the solitude.
Chimney Top on the North Fork Trail of West Virginia Read More »
Crabtree Falls, located near the George Washington National Forest in Virginia, is a place of stunning beauty. I got to visit this 1,200-foot waterfall yesterday after a rainstorm and my pictures do not do it justice. With five major cascades, it is one of the tallest waterfalls east of the Mississippi River, with the longest
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Catoctin Mountain Park — situated right next to Cunningham Falls State Park, is in north-central Maryland and is run by the US National Park Service. Its 5,120 acres overlook the Monocacy Valley. Back in 1935, the area was put under the CCC to be fostered as a public recreational area. Cunningham Falls State Park has
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Tobyhanna State Park was formed out of state lands that had been on a large artillery range that preceded Tobyhanna Army Depot. It has 5,540 acres of land surrounding Lake Tobyhanna, which is named after an American Indian term meaning “a stream whose banks are fringed with alder.” Today I saw a lot of birch
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The Range Trail is a winding path that traverses across swampy and rocky forest in the Tobyhanna State Park, established in 1949. As you can see from the third slide, the area was used by the U.S. military as a live-artillery training ground during both World Wars. I didn’t see any shell remains on my
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This is Humpback Mountain, an incredibly ancient formation dating from the Alleghenian orogany — ie, when the Appalachian Mountains were formed — between 325-260 million years ago. Made up of granite with greenstone, the mountain is part of the Blue Ridge Mountains in Virginia, and you can see why they are called that because of
These are the Shohola Falls, dropping a total of 200 feet in the half-mile course it makes along the Shohola Creek as it drops from Shohola Lake. Located in the Poconos Mountains of eastern Pennsylvania, “Shohola” is an American Indian word that means “meek” or “faint”. This area is part of the Catskill formation and
The origin of mushrooms is ancient — in fact, a 2020 scientific paper reported the discovery of fossilized fungi found in the Democratic Republic of Congo dating from 715 to 810 million years ago! Yet there is much scientists still do not understand about these fruiting bodies of the Earth’s mycelium layer (a network of
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The National Park at Acadia is a jewel among the United States natural lands. The movement to make trails and preserve the area for posterity and enjoyment got going in the 1800s. Even though many of the civic groups who galvanized these measures cut both women and people of color out, women were among the
Acadia Eliza Homans Read More »
https://chrissysenecal.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/PXL_20230807_185351865-1.mp4 Acadia National Park received its name in 1919. The biodiversity of New England’s only National Park is unusual, stemming from its past history of glaciers. Here you see some glacial domes on top of Mount Sargent. At 1,373 feet above sea level, one can see for miles around.
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