National History Day--Minnesota Edition

*contributed by OLGS, guest blogger *

The household members all went their own ways today. Joe College-on-leave is working on his marionette for next weekend’s May Day celebration, courtesy of the “Heart of the Beast Puppet and Mask Theater.” A crowd of up to 50,000 watches the parade of hundreds of puppets, floats, and other celebrants from East Lake Street in Minneapolis to Powderhorn Park in South Minneapolis. Pictured above is last year's two-story "Tree of Life" puppet. Joe is not quite finished with his creation and Domestic Tranquility promises a photo of his creation after May Day.

Joe High School stayed home and made dinner for us—vegeterian lasagna, very good. Louise worked at the church library at Unity Church, and your guest blogger, OLGS, volunteered as a judge at the Minnesota state competition for National History Day. NHD began in Cleveland in 1974 and has expanded in size and scope to involve middle school and high school students in primary source research projects in history. Categories include posters, research papers, video documentaries, and performances. OLGS was assigned to examine and rate poster projects created by groups of middle school students from around the state.

Several of the middle school boys seem enamored of the movie
“The 300” and produced posters about the Battle of Thermopylae. One group, not entirely certain of its facts, reported that Herodatus was a “historical consultant” to the film-makers. Ah, may the works of OLGS and his friends be consulted by film-makers 2,500 years from now!

Some of the girls did group poster projects on a woman named Sister Kenny, who in the 1940s created an alternative therapy regimen for polio patients. Instead of requiring patients to wear braces and casts, Sister Kenny (shown at right) offered baths and massage to help ease the pain of polio suffering. The “sister” in her title was a reference to her training as a nurse in Australia, not her membership in a religious order. The girls were inspired by her compassion and also her feminism in standing up to the male-dominated medical establishment that branded her treatment as quackery. At a time before the Salk vaccine, her human touch was probably as much as the practice of medicine could offer.

Across Minnesota, 30,000 middle school and high school students started in National History Day last fall. Twelve hundred were nominated at regional competitions to come to the state meet today, and after we got done judging, about fifty go on to the national meet in College Park, Maryland in June. Go Minnesota History Day.