Or yesterday that is.<\/a> \u00a0At an otherwise obscure church social, a 16 year old with a band, name of John Lennon, was introduced by a mutual friend to a 15 year old named James Paul McCartney. \u00a0A milestone in musical history.<\/p>\nI don\u2019t know, and I could be wrong, but I\u2019ll bet it was no big deal when it happened. \u00a0I\u2019d wager nobody looked and said, \u201cSee there Ethel? \u00a0Those two young fellows over there just met. \u00a0Bet you they\u2019ll form a band that will help usher in the counter-cultural revolution, bring the liberal revolution into mainstream England and America, and revolutionize not only music, but culture and entertainment.\u201d \u00a0I mean, I could be wrong. \u00a0That might be just what someone said that summer day, when the two teenagers first met. \u00a0I\u2019ll just bet not.<\/p>\n
You see, that\u2019s the problem with history. \u00a0You have to wait for it to happen before you can study it. \u00a0In its early days, it\u2019s rather tough to pinpoint. \u00a0That\u2019s why every year I more or less ignore the whole seasonal \u2018where Halloween came from\u2019 or \u2018the real roots of Christmas\u2019. \u00a0Fact is, we don\u2019t know. \u00a0We can guess. \u00a0We can try to arrange pieces to the puzzle. \u00a0But there will always be the missing pieces that allow for a tremendous amount of interpretation on our part. \u00a0There will be enough wiggle room to focus on this scrap of evidence or dismiss that other account over there. \u00a0Which is why you can often tell more about the historian in question than the history he or she is writing about.<\/p>\n
On the flip side, it also reminds us that many of the big headliners of history began rather innocuously. \u00a0The first time Portuguese traders\u00a0in Africa said, \u201cYou know, these few Africans might make easy slave labor\u2019, probably didn\u2019t seem like more\u00a0than a moral lapse in an obscure corner of the world. \u00a0It\u2019s likely that the world cared far more about the Senate\u2019s ratification of the Kellogg-Briand Pact that January day than the fact that a\u00a0family named King gave birth to a baby they would name Martin.<\/p>\n
Heck, in the early 1930s, how many leaders and pundits met the rise of a European\u00a0leader who sported a Charlie Chaplin mustache with disdain and humor? \u00a0 A decade later, not many were laughing.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s history for you. \u00a0The trick isn\u2019t to obsess about the past to the point of missing the present. \u00a0The point isn\u2019t to dismiss the small things of the present because they seem small. \u00a0The trick is to avoid repeating the problems of the past by using the past to recognize potential mischief\u00a0in the present (whew).<\/p>\n
Just a fun thought while confined to typing with one hand. \u00a0Happy weekend.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Or yesterday that is. \u00a0At an otherwise obscure church social, a 16 year old with a band, name of John Lennon, was introduced by a mutual friend to a 15 year old named James Paul McCartney. \u00a0A milestone in musical history. I don\u2019t know, and I could be wrong, but I\u2019ll bet it was no […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2805,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39,14],"tags":[80],"class_list":["post-10264","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-history","category-musings","tag-history"],"yoast_head":"\n
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