Reflections on the District #2

One of the things I find so fascinating about "history" is the reality that it is a constantly shifting term.  The various academic disciplines change and develop, but history grows -- literally -- on a daily basis.  As a result, the parameters we set upon "history" are in a state of eternal adjustment.  I was reminded of this as we perused a "treasures of the Smithsonian" exhibit with my 6-year-old...

Hmm.  She was positively floored there was no mouse, touch pad or other such mechanism involved.  (Wish we could have fired that puppy up for a game of good old "Oregon Trail.")

I am still on the front end of this lived-experience-becoming-history process; I'd love to walk through the National Museum of American History with my 96-year-old grandmother and see what she has to say.  I find resonance with an Apple II; I bet she'd have some observations to share about the World War II exhibit (and the Depression artifacts; and the Cold War sections; and...).

We are, quite literally, history.  It's the story of us -- if not personally, then in the larger sense of shared humanity.  We have only ourselves to blame if we transform it into something dry and dusty.