Always a Time for History

This year my BlogTalkRadio show Red River Writers Live with Peggy and Jon is featuring history. As the title indicates, history is always in season, but this year is the Civil War Sesquicentennial and the coming Centennial of our 48th state, Arizona. Arizona became a state on February 14, 1912. Both the Civil War and the western migrations of what is called the Victorian West period left painful scars on the United States and its various human groups. We are in a turbulent period now, and history if properly viewed can help us avoid some of the mistakes of the past.

As humans we live such short lives and in fact have inhabited the Earth for such a short period that we need to pay attention to what has gone on before us. Not only is it silly to keep making the same mistakes or keep restarting the same processes, but life is more rich and interesting if we have a clear picture of what happened in the past. There are some wonderful people that no doubt we would like to know, and some we would not want to meet under any circumstance. History writers help us bridge the gap of time to these people.

It is concerning when boards of education dismiss the value of history. History should be viewed with a clear eye. What happened, happened. You can pretty it up or obliterate evidence of what went on before, but it is a shame even to try. What is more, someone somewhere probably will unearth evidence to rebuild much of what happened.