TodayzHistory

        I’ve been hearing quite a few anxious murmurs, locally and nationally, that the United States is heading for another civil war.  They believe the political divide and animosity between the parties is causing an escalation that will lead to the two sides possibly taking up arms against each other.  If I’m being totally honest, I’ve had similar thoughts myself, but the analogy troubled me.  Something about it felt off, and I couldn’t quite pinpoint it.  In some ways, I feel like the fight is already happening, but under the radar like some negative vibe sitting just under the surface.  I have spent the last couple of months covering the Cold War in my junior classes, and a few weeks ago a realization hit me.  Is it possible that we are currently in a cold civil war?      After joining forces to defeat the Nazis in World War II, the United States and Soviet Union spent the next 45 years in a perpetual state ...

         The teaching profession has always elicited a large spectrum of opinions, running from the effusively complimentary (teachers are world changers who deserve much larger salaries) to the angrily negative (teachers are overpaid babysitters who get the summers off and complain constantly about their jobs).  Of course, there are many that fall in the more moderate category, and, honestly, each comment has some merit, depending on the teacher you’re talking about.  But, none can be applied fairly to the entire profession.  The last couple years of Covid have underscored the extremes, where teachers were seen as heroic (a term I find is vastly overused) at the beginning, and then slammed for pushing mask mandates and vaccination rates (also vastly simplified and overstated).  Working among these changing conditions has caused me to reflect on the past thirty years of teaching, and my soon to be retirement.  It also makes me look at th...

  Two weeks ago, with Mark Twain as my inspiration, I posited that the period of time covering 1950-1970 strongly, but not perfectly, parallels our present day circumstances.  In this post, I’ll do my best to complete the comparison.      The 1950’s-1970’s were prime Cold War years.  The fear of a communist takeover was the main impetus for the Korean War, Vietnam War, Space Race, and espionage.  Irrational fear led to the emergence of Senator McCarthy and his meteoric rise to infamy, and just as sudden fall back to earth.  This fear led people to act in ways they would not normally, justified or not, for good or bad.  The events of 9-11 have led to a similar fear of immigrants present day.  With fifteen out of nineteen hijackers from Saudi Arabia, anti-US terrorism was given a face, and that is what TSA agents started looking for in airports.  And these fears manifested into an anti-immigrant feel in this country where we...