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Category: history

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Science of History

Yesterday we had a real dust up over late afternoon tea. Four highly opinionated and voluble talkers carrying on over current events. We all four basically agree that national politics have taken a turn for the worse under the present Republican regime and a low opinion of ethics and morals in  politics in general. We also cover at least three and possibly four generations.

I suspect that similar discussions are going on all over the country, possibly the world. Here’s a taste of the contentiousness of our discussion: a debate over what percentage of the populace are talking about policy and ethics would take our group at least a half hour and we would never agree on anything. My contention that discussions are going on all over would be voted down three to one. If we voted.

Why am I bothering to write about this? Because, while thinking over our spirited and enjoyable conversation this morning, I realized something that may be important: History is not and never will be a science.

I was raised on the scientific method: Observe. Hypothesize. Test with experiments. Publish results. Other scientists retest. Form consensus. Repeat the cycle for the next few centuries and see what comes of it. Electric teakettles, TikTok, quantum mechanics, ball bearing drawer slides, computer networks, ivermectin, and mRNA vaccines for cancer are a few results of the scientific method.

Science relies on progress based on reproducibility of results. There  are no historical experiments. Only the real event and hazy human records and memories.

No scientist can rerun the 1962 Seattle World’s Fair, although we have two jelly-jar drinking glasses with the Space Needle on printed on them in our dish cabinet on Vine Maple Farm.

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The Worst Trump Legacy

Today, November 11, 2025, commemorates the eleventh hour of the eleventh month of the eighteenth year of the twentieth century, 11 am, November 11, 1918, when the First World War effectively ended with a cease fire. Perhaps the twentieth century’s finest hour.
I believe our lives should be driven by a search for kindness, mercy, and justice in all things. The armistice commemorated today is an example. I often fail in the search. I have pursued unyielding retribution when I wish had shown mercy, and I have put my own needs and desires ahead of others. So have we all.
But we have always had public examples of mercy and justice. Sometimes appearances have been better than actuality, but examples have been plentiful. I mention a few of my heroes: Martin Luther King, John McCain, Jimmy Carter, Walter Brueggeman. I haven’t agreed completely with the policies of many U.S. presidents, but until Donald Trump, I have seen in every president some desire for mercy and justice.
Donald Trump has done many things I don’t like: habitual lies, arbitrary ICE arrests, incompetent cabinet appointments, blatantly corrupt crypto deals, holding universities and law firms hostage, deriding and defunding science, interrupting SNAP food payments… The list goes on and I’m sure I have left out some of his most egregious actions.
But the example set by his character is the worst consequence of his election to the presidency.
Many people are easily influenced by examples. Trump is a terrible example, but since he entered the national political spotlight, I have seen more and more people accept bad conduct.
Unkindness is more acceptable today than it was a decade ago. Ostentatious wealth floods the news. Legal vengeance replacing justice is the norm. Pardons to cronies are expected.
And easily swayed people are following these examples.
This the worst Trump legacy.

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Reading The News

This morning while scanning the list of web sites in my browser bookmark tab labelled “News.” I may have been doom-scrolling, but I soon lost interest in today’s events and opinions and began to think about what “News” was like when I was growing up on Waschke Road in the region that the denizens occasionally call “The Fourth Corner,” referring, perhaps pretentiously, to the last corner of the U.S. to be dominated by Europeans.

First, we lived in the upstairs of my grandparents’ house. When I entered the first grade, my grandparents bought the house and five acres across the road and they moved there, leaving old farmhouse to my parents.

My grandparents subscribed to the local daily newspaper, The Bellingham Herald. The Herald arrived by mail the day after it was published. No home delivery on Waschke Road back then. When my grandparents finished reading the paper, they gave it to my parents, usually just before supper at five-thirty. Thus, we read the evening newspaper about twenty-four hours after it was published.

We got a TV when I was in the first grade, but we didn’t watch the evening news much because Dad switched off the television when the news started. That was the signal to go to the barn and milk the cows, taking all our attention until eight or eight-thirty. That schedule was fixed by the sun and the cows. Bovines must be milked every twelve hours or they stop lactating. Milking had to be at six in the evening and six in the morning, or the dairy interfered with raising summer field crops.

Sometimes, we turned on the radio at noon dinner break, but more pressing farm issues often dominated the midday.

Knowledge from off our road also came from magazines: The Saturday Evening Post, Washington Farmer, Farm Journal, McCall’s, Sunset Magazine, Time, U.S. News and World Report, and Saturday Review all graced our rural mailbox  at one time or another.

No dearth of content threatened the old farmhouse, but the cadence of our news sources was far different from my sources today. Our most constant news source, the daily newspaper, had a twenty-four hour delay built in. Everything else was either weekly or monthly.

Compare that to today. I have close to twenty websites listed in my news bookmark tab. I could easily add more. These are all updated continuously and I open them several times a day. I have almost instant news from all over the globe.

Am I better informed than I was in the 1950s and 1960s? Depends on what you mean by “better.” I certainly wallow in half-baked and ill-considered data, but am I more aware of what is important in my surroundings?

I don’t know.