Progress, Perhaps

DECEMBER SEVENTH is a day of momentous events. Two in particular come to mind. Pearl Harbor, of course, and then, thirty one years later, in 1972, apollo seventeen left earth for mankind's most recent visit to the moon.

There are still people alive who remember both events, and to those people, the world must seem an amazing place. It is difficult to imagine anyone in 1941 envisionsing humans walking on the moon thirty years later. For that matter, on pearl harbor day, most people might not have imagined any future at all.

Yet another major occurance took place on december 7. In a smll town in northwest arkansas, prairie grove, a battle was fought between union and confederate forces which weakened the confederate hold on the western part of the country, and portended that the united states, the "north", would be able to slice up the rebellious south, and eventually claim victory.

In the small town of prairie grove arkansas there are streets named after civil war generals, notably grant and custer, as well as commanders at the battle of prairie grove, hindman and herron. Among these, only hindman was a confederate commander. The other three were union.

The streets are new, in a new subdivision. They beg the question; at what point in recent american history did it become possible to get a street named in arkansas after a yankee general? And the answer, surely, is: only rather recently. Surely not in the nineteen sixties, a decade during which confederate flags still flew from many southern flagpoles.

So  who is to say which of the events of december 7 had the most lasting impact? sometimes the least remembered is the most important. We have avoided any further use of atomic weapons, and we have avoided any further world wars. We have failed to stay on the moon, but still have hope for further space exploration.

And in america, a once bitterly divided country now allows old adversaries to name streets after each other. Perhaps that is progress.