Sunday, July 29, 2012

What really happened..do we know?


To go back to an era or event that has past and unlock its many secrets is a task that historians and fiction writers alike do to pass their time. 

Delving into an old dusty history book the historian can unlock some of the mystery of the past such as who, what, where, & when... but the historian never knows for sure what really happened.  People kept secrets in olden times, especially if the subject was controversial or illegal.. it is not like today when the latest tidbit about someone is spread through the world of the Internet or “revealed” in an OP-ED piece for the paper.

Fiction writers do the same thing in a way - they try to go back and find stories that they can write about and fictionalize people to carry their plot line out.  Sometimes spending years on research before writing the book.

The truth is neither one ever know the actual facts.  Somewhere out there perhaps someone knows…but in a way that truth is colored by his or her own personality and its story told with his or her twist….

I often think that the only way to know what really happed in the past (as historian) is to hope there is a Heaven and hope I go there….if I get there the first thing I am going to do is ask St. Peter to play this or that piece of history back for me…just so I can see if I got it right.

I really don’t think most people realize that the job of a good historian is to interpret history, not just to write about it…it is like a researched opinion…but as always it is actually just an opinion!

Saturday, July 28, 2012

Well Rain has arrived...finally!

Well the rain has finally arrived..yea!!!! Trouble is it is on the weekend and will spoil a bunch of events...but life goes on.

The heat has brought misery to much of the United States but here in Central New York we have beat the bullet for the most part ...with of course, the exception of the two big storms this past week, one to the Rome area and then a tornado to Elmira..a rare event.

Tornados have occurred in our area in the past, one in Beaver Meadows (near today's Brookfield) wiped the small community off the face of the earth in the 1800's.  The locals called it "The Big Blow" and for many years would mark time by it saying.."This was the year before the Big Blow..or that happened 5 years after the Big Blow!"  The storm was so wide it looked like the end of the world coming toward the locals as one black wall of clouds.

Brookfield isn't just remembered for that event but if you attended an event at the the Madison County Fairground in 1945 you would have known about the tornado that tore apart the grandstand and did much damage!

As time goes on we probably will have more severe storm events... but on a whole we are sort of luckY..with a big Y!  The storms that we get are ones we like to talk about..the blizzard of '93, the Blizzard of this year or that...I guess we think we can handle blizzards.

Weather cycles continue..farm almanacks predict..doppler radar informs..but the truth is Mother Nature can dish something up without us even knowing its coming...She rules..and not nuclear power, atomic bombs and the likes can summon up fury so quickly.........