Month: September 2015

David McCullough tells of a lunch companion who was the op-ed editor of a major American newspaper. The companion had just visited the Vietnam Memorial and asked if McCullough had done.

“Yes,” McCullough replied. “On the same day I visited Antietam.”

“What’s Antietam?” his companion asked, not realizing that they were sitting little more than an hour’s drive from the site of the single bloodiest day in American military history, September 17, 1862.

People of a Certain Age might be excused if they have forgotten much of what was taught in their history classes in school, though surely they were told of the importance this battle. I’m sure I once knew how to prove the Pythagorean theorem well enough to pass Geometry, but about all I remember is that A squared plus B squared can be proved logically to equal C squared where A, B, and C are sides of a right triangle.

Pythagoras has not been particularly relevant to my daily living. Nor, for that matter, has Antietam, directly. Indirectly, though, it has. The outcome of the battle was the catalyst for President Lincoln issuing the Emancipation Proclamation. All Americans have felt the impact of that executive action.

Is it important for Americans to know major events of their shared history as a nation? I think so, but I was educated as a political scientist and have taught history (mostly U.S.) for forty years. I think it is great that naturalized citizens qualify in part on the basis of familiarity with facts about U.S. History. The assumption is that high school graduates in the U.S. know something about our history, too. There are times I worry that the newly minted Americans know more about U.S. History than average American high school graduate these days.

The question about what is important to know can apply to families, too. What family history is important for kupuna to pass along to the younger? Traditional societies have depended on the passage of knowledge about raising crops and kids, hunting, crafts, the curing of illness and so on as vehicles for the preservation of the family line. These days, many fewer of us require such knowledge in order to live. What needs to be passed along by parents, aunties and tutu kanes?

Some family history might not be pleasant. I am thinking of the image from bygone days of the crazy aunt living in the attic as much as I am about tales of infidelities and sibling disputes over inheritances. What do I need to know about what went on before me in the lives of my ancestors?

There is so much information being developed and made available these days as compared to when I graduated from high school in 1964. Young people—digital natives—have a much more intuitive grasp of the mechanics of retrieving that information than I, and clear ideas about what they think they need to know. They might ask, why do I need to know about Antietam when I can look it up on my smart phone?

Tough question. Early in my career as a school head, a parallel question came out of arithmetic: why should students learn to add when a calculator does it so much more quickly and accurately? I used to tell students that, if they know how to add the old-fashioned way, they can work when their calculator batteries die. Is it ever important to know about Antietam when you don’t have your phone near by?

Maybe we could begin to answer the question about the importance of Antietam or of knowing about Auntie in the attic by asking if that knowledge helps us understand ourselves, and the communities in which we live.

It is hard to overstate the importance of the Emancipation Proclamation in the history of the country, and it is sobering that there was so much blood spilled to create the circumstances for it to be issued. Current events suggest that the legacy of slavery still infuses relations between races in this country.

Crazy auntie in the attic might be a gentle reminder that all families aren’t perfect. Family pride is always better when accompanied by humility. Sibling disputes over who gets what when a parent dies are a much-too-frequent reminder that the love of money is, indeed, the root of evil.

Our experience tells us that Shakespeare got it right: the past is prologue. We worry that the philosopher Alfred Whitehead was also right. “He who does not learn from history is condemned to repeat it.” Americans should know about Antietam.

Knowing our collective past can help to bind us together in the present. Goodness knows we need things to bind us together in these times of political polarization and moral fractiousness. Younger people might scoff at us older folks for worrying too much about the past. We People of a Certain Age know, though, what William Faulkner understood: “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”

Daniel E. White

September 16, 2015

When we were growing up, family vacations featured long-distance car rides, usually to campgrounds, on special occasions to air-conditioned motels with televisions. Dad always drove. Dad was a focused driver. If the goal was Lake Chelan State Park, only the need for gas caused the Pontiac to stop until we got there.

Judy reminds me that I inherited the same focus and displayed it regularly in our early married days. “Making good time” was my measure of success, generally to her displeasure. She read maps and travel guides noting the attractions we were missing as we sped toward the day’s target.

I can’t say how or when the change occurred but she must have nearly had a stroke when I said one day on a drive, “ I wonder where this road leads” and turned off the highway.

What ever was the hurry?

On a recent drive in Southern California, we took an off-ramp not taken before. We found a shopping district, a huge area like a mall in the sense that there were many stores in a small area, but like an updated Disneyland Main Street in appearance, complete with outdoor clocks on high standards and old fashioned street lamps. A fun novelty, one we had passed dozens of times before without knowing it was there.

A day or two later, I had a speaking engagement at a retirement community off Santa Monica Blvd., two blocks east of the Hollywood Freeway. The community featured a chapel that spoke of an earlier time, when even small congregations had traditional-looking sanctuaries with pipe organs and creaky wooden pews. The whole neighborhood conjured in me visions of what Los Angeles had once been like. It was a surprise visit to a past I had not known.

Countless times I have driven that freeway going from one place to some other place and missing a special place.

In San Diego, we walked through Balboa Park following no appointed schedule. From 1962 to 1964, as teenage sweethearts attending nearby San Diego High, we walked through Balboa Park following no appointed schedule, but otherwise distracted. This time we took time to notice.

We stopped to learn about the symbolic figures carved on the west entrance arch of the park, found a new museum, ate dinner at a place other than The Prado, the latter being a fine place to eat in the center of the park to which we had driven with purpose on many occasions. To top off the evening, we attended a concert at the Spreckles Organ Pavilion. In our sixty years of either living in or going to San Diego, we had never done that before. Why, we wondered?

I am not alone in making discoveries when I take the time to get off the freeway or break out of my habitual orbits. We’ve all likely wondered why it takes the visit of an out-of-town guest to get us to points of interest in our own communities.

I also know that curious people view the world as a horn-of-plenty, replete with far too many treasures to explore in any one lifetime. So, I have not beaten myself up much over failing to have done this or seen that before. We can’t do it all.

The older I get, the grumpier I become in the few days preceding a trip away from home. Once away, my grumpiness lifts immediately. I enjoy traveling, seeing new places and old friends, finding what there is to find. I am a grump because I am comfortable in my house following familiar routines, and these are hard to leave.

Invariably, I come home with great memories, glad to have made the trip. Inevitably, I repeat grumptitude a few days before the next trip. Is this a condition of many People of a Certain Age when we leave our comfortable routines?

Being retired, we have more time to get off the expressway, to break out of our usual orbit, at least in theory. We can choose what we do with our time, more so than those not yet retired. That is the gift of being retired.

I suspect, though, that if one has not broken the habit of conducting trips as mad dashes from point to point “making good time,” or one has never explored a place purely out of curiosity before retirement, these habits will be harder to develop. So, fellow People of a Certain Age, maybe we can mentor some younger folks we know in the fine art of taking one’s time on occasion.

I will say this about Dad’s way, though. We saw a lot of campgrounds and spent many days enjoying nearby wonders of nature, and we always made good time getting there.

Daniel E. White

September 2, 2015