Welcome to the Critical Skills Blog, home to over a thousand human-generated articles—never AI—on topics that matter to continuous education. To find articles of interest, use the “Search” tab. Please feel free to comment, and please subscribe. All content on this site is free.
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The Box in the Closet
Every family has the box of unlabeled photographs — faces nobody can name, because the people who knew are gone. Nothing was wrong. Nobody decided anything. The visit simply never got scheduled. The grandchild has decades to ask. The parent, who controls the gate, has a few. The grandparent has… More⇢
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The Brand That . . . . Measured and Built America
New Britain, Connecticut had no river worth damming — so in 1843 Frederick Trent Stanley put a steam engine in a bolt shop and made hardware anyway. The name went on the plane, the level, the folding rule, and eventually on a yellow steel tape in nearly every pocket in… More⇢
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Courage and Consequence – He Turned the Law on His Own
A New Hampshire lawyer who moved south and bought human beings. A man who opposed secession and then enlisted anyway, at forty-three, when nobody was asking him to. A former Confederate handed the brand-new Department of Justice. That was Amos T. Akerman in the summer of 1870. He read the… More⇢
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Dirty Politics? That’s Nothing New . . . .
We are told daily that American politics has hit an unprecedented low. The record says otherwise. In 1791, Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson put a poet on the government payroll to edit a newspaper attacking the administration he served — and dirty politics has been standard equipment ever since: the… More⇢
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The City That . . . . Beamed the Sky
For nineteen years, one company in America could roll the wide-flange beam — and it was not in Pittsburgh. It was in a town founded on Christmas Eve by pacifists who did not believe in war, and which became the arsenal of the American century. Bethlehem’s steel stands in the… More⇢
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Quietism – The Forgetfulness of Citizens in a Republic
In 1795 Thomas Jefferson watched a country that had burned John Jay in effigy simply stop caring, and named what he saw: the quietism into which people fall after first sensations are over. A republic, he warned, does not lose an argument — it loses interest. Two centuries of evidence… More⇢
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Women History Wrote Out – 04 – The Monogram in the Leaves
She was among the first women on earth licensed to practice architecture — and she drew the images that carried Frank Lloyd Wright to Europe and changed modern design. The visual style the world calls “Wright,” the linework and the landscapes and the Japanese-print grace: substantially hers. When Wright fled… More⇢
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How Healthcare Changed – 04 – The Cost of Clean
They celebrated the pus. In the Victorian operating ward, the thick matter that rose in a wound had a name — laudable pus — and surgeons welcomed it as healing, while their patients died three weeks after the knife. In 1867 Joseph Lister read Pasteur, made a leap the Frenchman… More⇢
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In the Arena – Ignaz Semmelweis – He Was Right and That Was Not Enough
n Vienna in 1846, one maternity ward was three times as deadly as the ward beside it — and the mothers knew. Some gave birth in the street rather than be sent to the doctors. Ignaz Semmelweis found the reason: the doctors themselves were carrying death from the dead house… More⇢
Meet Your Host – Charlie Jett
Charles C. Jett is an author, civic educator, and Professional Certified Coach based in Chicago. A graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy (Class of 1964) and Harvard Business School, he served during the Cold War aboard the nuclear submarine USS Ray (SSN 653), where his tactical innovations helped inspire Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan character. He developed the Field Studies methodology to teach “Critical Skills” and was endorsed by the Department of Labor in 1994. He is the author of six books, including Super Nuke!, hosts three podcasts, and writes across his Critical Skills Blog and Civic Sage platforms on history, leadership, and the health of the American republic. He and his wife, Dr. Nancy Church, co-host the Chicago Salons at Water Tower Residences.
