When I was in the fifth grade I told my parents I was going to be a historian. My favorite period was World War II, because when I was in grammar school the original first person POV recounts of war heroes or of being in occupied France or working in the resistance were coming out….
Category: Writing The Past
The Rough Draft of History
As Charlotte North Carolina explodes in senseless violence, not too different from Baltimore, Chicago, New York, Ferguson I am reminded of the way journalist Alan Barth wrote in 1943 , “News is only the first rough draft of history,” a quote normally attributed to Washington Post Publisher Philip L. Graham. The attribution is irrelevant. What is important…
Reading Your Own History
When do you think you read your own history? Or maybe it’s read history during your own time. I think the first time it dawned on me was when I was reading a book about Twyla Tharp and I realized that the days and dates she was discussing I had lived. And I could remember…
This Day in History
The world in many ways was much like now. The geo-political landscape was constantly changing. Then, there was the threat from the USSR because Joseph Stalin died March 5 leaving an obviously struggle inside the Kremlin. Then, it was the Korean Conflict and the multiple events, sometimes called brushfire incidents, the Kremlin and Washington DC acted out…
Non-Fiction
Non-fiction––meaning true, real, what happened. Don’t putz with the facts, tell them. If you want to emphasize one over the other to prove your thesis, well, okay then, but let us know. Otherwise, it is just plain annoying! I’m reading MARY POPPINS, SHE WROTE: THE LIFE OF P.L. TRAVERS. And Why? is what I keep…