Leaving A Trace

ONE THING I DO is write and publish online one page of non fiction prose each and every day, at a minimum. If nothing else, some future historian might learn something from it; the personal habits of the early twenty first century American lower classes, or something like that. Sometimes I wish everybody would write his or her autobiography, or make a film describing his or her life.At the moment, admittedly, there doesn't seem to be any doubt that our current early twenry first century historical epoch will be well remembered and documented, magnitudes of times better recorded and woven into the fabric of human history than any and all periods of time before. I am a historian, and taught history for years at various schools, to various grade levels,and am painfuully aware of the propensity of young people to be disinterested in history. Let's remember that the way to make history interesting to young people is to make it interesting and fun, which it inherently is in any event, so, perhaps the task of a history teacher is simply to avoid ruining history by making it boring drudgery and work. In my days in graduate school studying European history I was required to take a class called "Historiogralhy" in my masters degree program. The class is essentially a sutdy of the historical professions, the "history of history" so to speak. It turned dout ot be an interesting class, learning about the most prominent, seminal historians and their works within the particular area of history, in my case, modern Europe (1815-present). Early modern Europe is usually considered to be from 1500, when several features of our modern western civilization emerge and come into play, to the preent. At least, that was the classification scheme in 1980 when I got my masters degree, and I think it still is. The Protestant Reformation, the rise of nation states, the economic expansion of Europe, and European colonialism characterizes the changes around that time which ushered in the modern world. History is a story told by a storyteller, usually in a book.I love listening to a good history lecture more than reading a good history book, although its close. Our (my) descndants might marvel that we in the early twenty first century still got in our cars, and drove hundreds and thousands of miles at high rates of speed, and that world wide, approximately one million people die doing this, and that yet, this doesnt seem to faze us, each day we pile into our cars and go speeding off down the road, wherever we wish. Surely that situation won't continue much longer. How can it? Trying to drive cars which spew no deadly poison into the atmosphere is crucial, and the best bet might be to quit driving these individual vehicles altogether, to rely entirely on mass public transportation. IN the long ago year twenty twenty six we were still damaging the Earth's ecosystem, but becoming increasingly aware of the harm, and tryng to change our ways, which, with any luck, and, we had better hope, happens fast. One milllion people killed in car crahses every year is hard to believe. When I consider that I was born and lived during the era in which people started traveling in outer space, I feel grateful. It is encouraging that there are conversations ongoing concerning threats to life on Earth and how to mitigate them. I want to leave more than a mere trace. I want to leave a thriving, healthy human culture.