Full Disclsoure

This is my first foray into blogging. In turns I'm fascinated and repealed by the whole enterprise. But . . . I'm game to give it a try!

No doubt I"ll get better at the mechanics; I promise that I'll stop fiddling with the format; and I'm hopeful that I'll figure out a way to use labels that will be instructive.

Labels--how many? which ones? Already I'm awash in them so maybe fewer is better. Start a list:

• St. Olaf
• Freedom, cause it is the theme of the semester
  
• American Dream, cause we'll be thinking about this for four semesters
  
• agency, because Jim Cullen identifies this as important (Here's what he writes: "Agency, in turn, lies at the very core of the American Dream, the bedrock promise upon which all else depends." p. 10)  The American Dream: An Idea that Shaped a Nation (Oxford, 2004).
  
• landscape
• Our five facts: Plymouth Plantation (become Anne Hutchinson), Pocahontas, D of I, Monticello (become several looks at place), F. Douglass. And we've added Four Freedoms and Franklin
  
• authors and people