Black Enlightenment philosophers
Old Church of Saint Mary of Zion in Aksum, Ethiopia, which was standing when Zera Yakob was writing In the 1600s and 1700s, many new ideas came to Europe from Africa. The [...]
Free Store PDX
PDX Free Store COVID update: we're not holding any regular free stores until other retail stores in the Portland area open back up, or until we figure out another arrangement. We're considering [...]
The United States and… Hadrian?
Mission Dolores, California - Native people playing the stick game (1816) People always ask me, and you probably, and the world generally, whether this catastrophe or that one is like the [...]
A review of the Met’s Sahel exhibit
One of the last things I did before the lockdown was to go to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York to see their temporary exhibit, Sahel: Art and Empires on [...]
Ramadan 2020
The Islamic holiday of Ramadan moves slowly backward through Earth's seasons, because the Islamic calendar is slightly shorter than the solar year. A few years ago, Ramadan fell in the beginning of [...]
Earth Day coming up!
Earth Day 2020 will be tomorrow, Wednesday, April 22nd. I remember the first Earth Day, when my hippie-revolutionary grade school planted trees in the front of the school. The tree I planted [...]
4/20: the history of hemp
Did you know that people have been burning marijuana to intoxicate themselves for thousands of year - probably tens of thousands of years? And that in addition to this purpose, they've also [...]
Smallpox: pandemics in history
Aztec doctor treating people with smallpox (1500s AD, Codex Mendoza) Like many other diseases, including the current pandemic, smallpox probably got started in Central Asia. Around 150 AD (almost two [...]
Easter and Easter Eggs (and Lent!)
People tell a lot of stories about the origins of Easter - is it a pagan holiday? A Christian holiday? How is it related to Passover? Here we try to sort that [...]
History of Passover
If you're preparing to celebrate Passover at home, here are some helpful links: First, what even is Passover? Who were the first people to celebrate Passover? Why? https://quatr.us/west-asia/where-did-passover-come-from-jewish-holidays.htm Second, the Bible story [...]
