ALY ALLEN | THE BLOG

i had something different scheduled for today. but i was reminded that today is a special day. today is a day on which Americans remember a remarkable and courageous man. a man who risked his life, his reputation, his family's safety to ignite a fire in his people: an insatiable thirst and demand for  real freedom. i'm not here today to comment on the current state of things, our success or failure in this area. i know that some of you would suggest we have much further to go, and others of you are completely ignorant of what i could possibly mean by that. that's not why i'm here today. i'm simply here to remind us of the one who started it all. can you imagine the courage and resolve that it took to face the American landscape of segregation and discrimination and brutality and disgusting racism? i can't really fathom it. Martin Luther King Jr., in my humble opinion, is a hero of our Christian faith, quite simply. a man who advocated non violence, even ...

did you all know i have a degree in history? i haven't exactly used it for anything, but i did earn it just the same. one of the major requirements for this degree were two huge research papers that spanned an entire semester each. for the first paper, we were required to choose a topic and then read as many secondary resources as we possibly could on the subject. secondary resources are basically books written by historians who have researched and learned about the topic, and then written a book about it. it's their synthesis and interpretation of their research.  the second paper required that we choose a topic and research all of the primary sources that we could find. we could throw in some secondary resources too, but the main objective was for us to actually practice being a historian ourselves. i wrote my paper on the development of the city of Coronado, see that fancy photo below? sounds fascinating, right? i basically lived in the Coronado library and his...