An endlessly fascinating thing about history is that while major milestones — the beginning or end of wars, dates of notable battles or events — remain unchanged, the tide of story and narrative ebbs and flows around them, changing over time as a new source of information is discovered, artefacts or buildings are unearthed, or advances in technology shed new light on ancient things.
As an example, we know that the Titanic struck an iceberg at 11:40 p.m. on April 14, 1912, and sank at 2:20 a.m. on April 15, and there were many eyewitnesses who wrote accounts of what they saw. For many years it was accepted wisdom that the ship had sunk in one piece, leading some to believe that if she could be located, she could be raised (hello, Clive Cussler). However, when she was at last discovered in 1985, she was found to be in two pieces some distance apart, and it's now accepted that she did, in fact, break apart at or near the surface; it just took 73 years to find that out.
For this reason, the best histories are usually those written some time after an event (or a reign, or an era) has taken place. Not only does it allow new information to be uncovered, but the distance allows the dust to settle, the hubbub to die down, things to become clearer, passions and vested interests to lose their power to cloud judgment.
That's why I sometimes wish that I could be around somehow in 50 or 100 years, when historians are picking the bones out of the, er, interesting times in which we’re now living. At the moment we’re seeing what happens when a vengeful, narcissistic, greedy con artist with the anger management skills of a three-year-old having a temper tantrum is put in charge of (arguably) the world’s most powerful country.
The immediate fallout has been fairly obvious, with the grifter-in-chief causing chaos whenever his eye momentarily lights on something he wants, but what will the long-term consequences be? How many of America’s institutions and cherished ideals — up to and including democracy itself — will still be standing when he leaves? Let’s just say that the answers to those questions won’t be clear for some time to come, but the historians of the future will certainly have a lot to pick over.
Of course, the immutability of events that happened can be depressing. As fascinating as it is to view new images of the Titanic and learn more about her, or look over a dinner menu from First Class and marvel at the luxury and splendour, or delight in the exploits of “Unsinkable” Mollie Brown, the central fact that she sank on her maiden voyage, at the cost of some 1,500 lives, casts a pall over everything related to her.
So it was a few days ago, when I took my regular trip down memory lane via the pages of the Journal to see what was making news in this week, 50 years ago. For the last few months my trips back a half-century were full of joyous news about Ashcroft’s brand new Drylands Arena: the dream come true at long last, the hard work of the volunteers who made it happen, the events there, and the happy plans for the arena’s future. Every time I read one of these articles, I winced slightly, and sighed, because I knew — as those people back in winter and spring of 1974/1975 could not know — that in late May of 1975, their pride and joy was going to burn to the ground in less than an hour.
While it would be nice to have a crystal ball tell us that America (and the rest of us) will survive these tumultuous times, perhaps it’s just as well that we can’t know the future, or how current events will play out. And if there’s a lesson here, it’s to enjoy the day, and whatever happiness you can find there, because none of us know what tomorrow will bring.
