Readers will be pleased to note that blog posts might indeed be worth something—though how much remains up in the air.

The University of Virginia has recently rediscovered a shape-note tunebook from 1821. A book at the Harry Ransom Center in Austin, Texas offers “an account of the Civil War in the language of the King James Bible.” Archeologists have uncovered new findings about eighteenth-century life in Boston’s North End. Across the pond and a century earlier, early moderns went crazy for coffeehouses.

An article in the Wall Street Journal argues that infrastructure has traditionally followed investment, not the other way around, as Obama suggests. A Confederate heritage group in Richmond has revealed plans to fly a Confederate flag on a nearby highway. A New York Times blog piece places the Tea Party’s policy on immigration in the context of the floundering of the Federalist Party. And Michael Zuckerman suggests that even though elite academics may remain reluctant to wrangle with the question of whether or not the American Revolution was a good thing, this out-of-touchness matters less than that “of the political, economic, and media establishments.”

Over at Inside Higher Ed, an author contemplates the decline in funding and interest for the humanities alongside the founding fathers’ immersion in history, literature, and the arts. A piece in the New Republic pushes for humanities scholars to more fully embrace science. Oregon has proposed a plan to eliminate the up-front cost of college by having students pay a proportion of their income for a number of years post-graduation, instead. Ohio ponders the plan, too. The Chronicle of Higher Education considers the feasibility of making all U.S. public education free. The Atlantic provides a counterargument. Tenure-track faculty confront the problem of adjunctification head-on. And there’s more on the cursed O Grab Me.