Cutting Edge Computing

About the Tide of History September 16, 2021

This story starts about 20 years ago, when my manager at the time Shari Zedeck mentioned that her daughter had entered and won a statewide school history competition, where she was required to research and write about a significant event in history.

She chose to write about Watergate, and by all accounts did a really good job of it.  My immediate and visceral response was that Watergate wasn’t history, it was current events.  After all, while I was a teen, I remember it well.  But it made me ponder on just what history means, an idea that I carried forward into my most recent blog post.

The answer is that if you had a front row seat, it wasn’t history.

So what did I have a front row seat to?  November 22, 1963, I was in the first grade at Johnson Street Elementary School, and we were abruptly sent home from school about half an hour early, without explanation.  I got home to find my mother in crying in front of the TV.  “They killed him.”  (I hope you know who).

So the mid-late 1960s, and everything beyond, I at least know second-hand through the news (and the news is a separate discussion).  None of this seems like history to me, even if I had to read about it in the newspapers (Pittsburgh Press and Beaver County Times).

Yet one news source made the point that the soldiers killed in the suicide bombing at Kabul Airport were at best babies on 9/11.  To them, 9/11 was something that they learned about in school.  There couldn’t have been any direct memories.

So what is history?  It’s actually a moving target, depending on your perspective of the events in question.  The distinction may well be an artificial one, except that current events tend to shape your life, and history is more or less academic.  Was my outlook and attitudes shaped by the assassinations and race riots of the 1960s, duck and cover in elementary school (look it up), the Vietnam War in the early 1970s, the gas lines later in the 1970s, and so on?  I think so.

Current events take on a certain personal point of view.  I wanted to fly, soloed the day after my 16^th birthday, was in Junior ROTC in high school, ROTC in college, an Air Force officer for six years.  My vision prevented me from being a pilot, but I was affiliated with the military for more than a decade.  The Vietnam War, Grenada (bet you don’t remember that one), and Beirut gave me qualified respect for those who served, while recognizing that our policy makers were not by any means perfect.

History does not have a personal perspective; even if I’ve visited historical locations, the events surrounding them remain removed from my experience.  That doesn’t make them any less real, but it does mean that they don’t have the same impact.

So take advantage of the current events in your lifetime.  I have lived in interesting times, which is both a blessing and a curse.