How’s your history?

If you’re like me (younger than 25), your most reliable sense of history probably begins around the time you were born. Even so, our generation has filled out voter registration paperwork, watched CNN or Fox News daily and often perused USA Today or the New York Times (because, as students, we get it free) so as to pretend we’re reading something not spooned out for us on a digital platter.

Nonetheless, please don’t adopt the attitude that 2008 really is some kind of historic or “watershed” year. It’s certainly nice to think so. And scientifically speaking, there’s always something going on, as the hot chick on the weather channel tells us.
But is that something history? No. At least not the kind I’d like to read a book about some day, or have kids learn in school.

So if you don’t mind, I’m going to place a moratorium on the superficialities spouted by our textbooks, professors and high school teachers under the veil of “history.” Then I’m going to breeze through a few fascinating “plot points” in the wondrous narrative I believe our history is and still ought to be.

Let’s start with Fort Ticonderoga (“Fort Ti” for short), the crown jewel of educational tourist sites in upstate New York and a stronghold against the British in the second half of the 18th century. Thomas Jefferson and James Madison painted ennobling portraits of the former garrison on Lake Champlain in their diaries.

In the year 2008, the New York Times had to report the site’s president proclaiming it “essentially broke.” The New York State Board of Regents forbids selling the fort museum’s artwork to settle debts, but its leadership, headed by executive director Nicholas Westbrook, have placed politics over principles enough to think they can afford to ignore the Regents’ statute. Surely, old T.J. would’ve cheered them on.
Reflections on 1968 should indeed include the murders of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy, the Tet Offensive and “Tricky Dick” Nixon’s ominous rise to the presidency. Beyond that, the overrated psychedelic anniversaries and memoirs on magazine covers aren’t doing it for me.

Just go back 20 years to the photograph of Harry Truman, beaming and brandishing the newspaper headline “DEWEY DEFEATS TRUMAN.” Dismissed and disdained by every major newspaper as a failure from 1947 to the night before the election, Truman’s whirlwind “whistlestop” tour of the country earned him not only sudden but genuine endearment to millions. He might have proved almost half the nation dead wrong. Isn’t that just as memorable, if not more, than the shadows of disillusionment cast by the Baby Boomers?

Lastly, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, one of the most incendiary authors of the 20th century, died last month. His 18 years in the United States helped solidify his status as an eminent voice of individual rights, democracy and anti-censorship – exactly what today’s Russia is punishing every nefarious chance it gets.

“Historied” out yet? Don’t be. It’s still a new century, and we’ve got 92 years to go.