September 4, 2024: Expansive innovation

We’re rebuilding landscapes and crossing borders and timelines, but never streamsIn order to avoid paradoxes, we’ll meet up with Rangers Susan Ashman and  Kelly Fellner, and Researcher and PhD candidate Jessica Scott at the Springfield Armory National Historic Site, where they’ll hold Workers Weekend. The event is meant to highlight both the impact of the location as one of only two federal armories in the nation, as well as the industrial innovations beyond firearms that the site helped to create. We find ties to our young nation, as well as ways we all can access their records for connections to family geneologies and much more. We’re also exploring art that casts a wide net across the Atlantic to Northampton. Younes Rahmoun is a Moroccan artist who has just installed a massive and sprawling body of work at Smith College, and not just in their Art museum. We head to the campus to catch the artist alongside curators Emma Chubb and Tiffany Bradley to explore the many ways this multi-materialed, multi-faceted portfolio connects not just different departments of the college, but our humanity as well . Plus  Word Nerd Emily Brewster, senior editor at Merriam Webster, elongates our vocabulary with super long words that you can’t use in scrabble because there is neither enough pieces nor board space, but d\ you can impress your friends with it (although it is probably not the one you’re thinking of, since that one only has 28 letters).