History Perspective
 

The US was formed a long time ago in human terms.
The Brits and others will scoff at the notion citing 1000 years+ of history. But that doesn't mean much,
anything that happened before your Grandparents were born doesn't affect you any more than if it
happened 1000 years ago.
Anyway, sometimes I have trouble connecting events in the right time frame relationship, especially
the 1800s vs the 1900s. I found these two photographs that tie them together.

A young Teddy Roosevelt, first POTUS of the 1900s, watches Abraham Lincoln funeral cortège in 1865.

http://cellar.org/2017/Roosevelt wat...al cortège.jpg

And Times Square, NY, NY, over 70 years. Been a whole lot of shakin' goin' on.

http://cellar.org/2017/timessquare.jpg

It seems like there is always construction going on. Because there has been. Imagine the construction that went on in NYC during those 70 years.

I was just down in St. Augustine for vacation. That was hard to wrap my mind around. I think of this country as being 200 years old, even thought at this point it's 240 years old. But anyway, St. Augustine was established over 200 years before the founding of our country. It was as old to the founding fathers as the founding fathers are to me.

I've never been able to let go of a phrase in some history documentary I watched a long time ago. They said some area of land had been controlled by so-and-so for a really long time "with the exception of a brief 200-year rebellion."

WE are a "brief" 200-year rebellion.

Flints FACE is a brief 200 year rebellion

If you take a 1000 sheet roll of toilet paper to represent 4.6 billion years and unroll it, The first homo sapiens (200,000) years ago appear on the last 5/32" on the last sheet. Modern civilization (6000 years ago) is represented by the last 1/160" or about .16mm

WHY DOES EVERYTHING HAVE TO BE ABOUT TOILET PAPER

*chuckles*

That's one way of looking at it.


What I always find interesting is the way something can be a fundamental of our existence - a ubiquitous understanding of the world or ourselves - and seem like it must always have been so - and then you realise it's a recent development. It's always a little disconcerting.

'The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.' L.P. Hartley, The Go-Between

On the other hand -

My mother's maiden name is Gorton - which means my anglo-saxon or medieval ancestors* originate from a small area of Manchester just a few miles from where I grew up and within spitting distance of where Mum grew up.

It means 'dirty river' :P


* depending on whether the family name comes from the original inhabitants of the settlement or from later arrivals who adopted it as a locational surname during the 15/16 centuries.

Everything has to be about something, might as well be toilet paper.

It's not. Sometimes it's about football (fields).



You'll appreciate watching in fullscreen as we approach the end.

Cool.

100 years ago.

Here we see dynasties in action. Money marries money and the power it retains.
Edsel Ford gets to stand on the far running board for the picture because he married J.L.Hudson's niece.
Ralph gets in the picture because he has huge balls. (My source said Ralf.)
I suppose in fairness, marrying money was also because that was their social circle.
Marrying some trollop flower seller is only for Hollywood. ;)

A diner in Philly a hundred years ago. No wait, 117 years ago. That skews our perspective. Think of the changes from 1900 to 1917, then the changes from 2k till now. This is what messes with our minds. :rollanim:

The last six revolutionary war vets in 1865.