My wrap-up post to the series on "Responding Rapidly to Our Communities" for the National Council on Public History is now live on the History@Work blog. This post is both a summary of our current news and tragedy-heavy environment, the challenges of that landscape, and a call to take action guided by a few simple principles: to be keepers of memory and places of refuge during the storms. The closing lines come from the heart:
"When distilled to its essence, what tragedy demands of us should, in fact, be the most natural to summon: it demands our humanity. Tragedy simply asks that we reach into the depths of our most human of hearts, find the light, and beam it back out."