History never repeats itself, but the Kaleidoscopic combinations of the pictured present often seem to be constructed out of the broken fragments of antique legends.
~ from the novel “The Gilded Age: A Tale of To-Day” by Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner, 1874
There’s something comforting about history, despite its many tales of man’s inhumanity to man, our sheer impotence in the face of nature’s wrath, and the recurring lesson that when we think we’re in charge, we’re usually not, and when we are, we usually screw something up.
The author of Ecclesiastes put it this way, “…there’s nothing new under the sun.”
There are many weeks when I’m pulling snippets for our Days Gone By — which came from the Rangely Times, the Meeker Herald version was called Yesterdays — when I come across an article that could be lifted from a century-old front page and republished today that would be completely relevant, accurate and timely.
I sent an article admonishing parents of high schoolers to cooperate with their children’s teachers and not expect the teachers to be solely responsible for their children’s success to a friend last week. The article was 100 years old.
This week’s “wait, how hold is this article?” moment also comes from 1922, in the form of a press release admonishing vaccine skeptics to get a booster shot to protect them against smallpox, which was circulating in Colorado again. Cases were on the rise, and the press release noted that being vaccinated, though not a perfect solution, was still likely to prevent death by smallpox. The sad part about that one is that smallpox vaccinations had been around for more than a century by then.
And over the weekend I listened to a podcast series about sitting members of Congress accused of aiding and abetting a plot to overthrow the government. Nope, this wasn’t a current events podcast. The series outlined events that occurred pre-World War II, involving wanna-be Nazis in the U.S., armed militias, a famous radio preacher, corporate executives, a weird campaign called “America First,” some domestic terrorism, bomb plots, and funds secretly funneled in to the U.S. by the Third Reich.
How is that comforting, you ask? Because we got through it. And that gives us hope that we can get through the next thing that’s coming down the pike, even if we can’t prevent history from continuing to rhyme.
As the lyrics to Bon Jovi’s “Wanted Dead or Alive” song from the ‘80s begins, “It’s all the same, only the names will change.”
By NIKI TURNER – editor@editorht1885.com
