THE RURAL HISTORY & CULTURE ASSOCIATION
OF SASKATCHEWAN

Everyone’s favourite Saskatchewan history-themed musician, Don Modderman has just launched an exciting new website to promote his many musical projects including, Ragtime Don and the Word Junkie, Mystic Flute and Crofters.  You can see what Don and company are up to (and grass definitely does not grow under Don’s feet) and you can order his awesome CDs right off the site, including his latest, Steamboats on the Saskatchewan. The site looks and sounds great, check it out!

The Saskatchewan Council of Archives and Archivists (SCAA) in planning another action-packed week of activities to celebrate Archives Week in Saskatchewan, which runs from February 1 to February 7, 2010.  Activities are being planned by archives in Saskatoon, Regina, Lloydminister, Humboldt, La Ronge, North Battleford and Rosetown. Events include archive open houses, film nights, celebrity readings, concerts and much more.  Information on all these exciting activities is on the SCAA website including dates and locations. It will be a terrific week and a great chance to highlight the important work of archives and archivists in Saskatchewan!

“COME, my tan-faced children,
Follow well in order, get your weapons ready;
Have you your pistols? have you your sharp edged axes?
Pioneers! O pioneers”

Above is the first stanza in Walt Whitman’s epic poem, Pioneers! O Pioneers. First published in 1855, the poem runs for 26 verses as it extolls the virtues of the men and women who traversed the North American continent to build the modern United States of America.  Using this poem as its touchstone, Levi Strauss & Co. has launched a new advertising campaign (view video) declaring “This country was not built by men in suits.”  While clearly designed to sell blue jeans it is more than that according to Susan Hoffman, Levi’s Executive Creative Director: “We want to refresh and reinvent the idea of the pioneering spirit for the times in which we live” The campaign states: “I am the new American pioneer, looking forward, never back. No longer content to wait for better times… I will work for better times.”  It conjures up the image of people who succeeded despite hardship rather than simply whining about the unfairness of life.

The linking of the past to present  for inspirational purposes is a strategy that was very successful during Barrack Obama’s presidential campaign and it is not surprising that an advertiser is now adopting a similar approach. While there have been numerous ideological objections to the campaign, it is terrific to see historical ideas being re-invented for a new generation. That is the only way that history can really matter.