I had an American history teacher that looked at things with a one hundred year perspective.
Let’s look at the difference between 100 years; let’s say 2024 and 1924, let’s say 1966 and 1866, let’s say 1900 and 2000.
This tool didn’t work when I was twenty, but makes more sense know that I’m far from twenty.
The teacher took a classroom of kids born in the mid nineteen-sixties and told us to imagine that we were born in the mid eighteen-sixties.
He was trying to put into perspective the concept of time so we could understand The Reconstruction years a little easier.
The only perspective I had at the time I took this course was getting REM tickets and discovering sorority girl areola sizes.
Today this learning tool makes much more sense of how and where we stand in time.
Instead of being born when Lyndon Johnson was president, I was born right after the Civil War. Instead of Covid, it is the aftermath of The Great War in Europe.
Right now, we are smack dab in the roaring twenties and the stock market crash of ‘29 is only four years from now.
The next decade brings a depression and sixteen years from now we will be in a second Great War.
Why am I trying to parallel my lifetime with a historical period that I studied in an American History class?
It got me thinking….
The other day I mentioned that we are one month away from completing twenty-five percent of this century. A century that seems like it started just eighteen months ago and not twenty-five years ago.
The Civil War thru the First World War into the roaring twenties and the start of the depression seems like a long period of time.
Butt,
It is the same length as going from the Vietnam War into the Reagan years thru Y2K past Covid and into what will be the Post Trump era.
The Civil War to the Roaring Twenties seems like a long time, but Lyndon Johnson to Joe Biden is our lifetime and makes it easier to comprehend.
People born during the Civil War were old by the time the Japs bombed Pearl Harbor and weren’t around when Elvis started singing Colored People music.
Does it make sense yet?
Today’s Morning Chalkboard is a history lesson in where we are in time.
The length of time becomes an easier measuring stick with age.
1979 to 1984 seemed like an eternity for me, but 2019 was the day before yesterday and next month is already 1985… I mean 2025
Put your timeline into a history book and have fun analyzing where you are in the moment.
Today is Special Education Day. I wouldn’t bring it up, but it has hit home these last eighteen years. A big shout out to the teachers, the educators and the parents that deal with special needs children and adults.
The first Monday of December and meteorological winter is upon us. Forty degrees has officially become a warm day. A good day starts if I don’t have to scrape ice off Betty the Green Blazers windows.
Breathe in the brisk air and start enjoying the Christmas light popping up in your neck of the woods.
Winter walks are good for the soul
