nhboy
Ubi bene ibi patria
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"History and place have always been a passion of mine. I’ve spent a good part of life trudging through brush and fields to find where Peo-peo-mox-mox was brutally killed or where Ranald MacDonald settled down after being freed from a Japanese prison.
I search out these places to feel what I call an “historical moment.” It’s hard to describe what that is exactly other than to say it’s an intense feeling of a sense of history. It’s as if the ghosts of those who once inhabited the site gather around me to share their joys, their fears, and their stories.
Sometimes, the historical moment feels so strong, I am overcome with emotion. The first time that happened was at Dover Green. I hadn’t really sought out that site—I was just killing time while my wife was interviewing for a job with the Delaware Department of Education.
All of a sudden, I visualized farmers, storekeepers, millers, and tavern keeps, mustering as minutemen. I could feel their fear, their anger, and their yearning for self-determination. It shook me.
It happened again when I stood in the basement of the U.S. Supreme Court looking at the Brown v. the Board of Education decision. That document demonstrated that the system could work, that government can be a great force for good, that even the most evil, institutionalized injustices could be righted. It demonstrated that Langston Hughes’s America, the one that never was, could be the America of which he dreamed.
B Reactor: The last place I was overwhelmed by an historical moment was at B Reactor on the Hanford Site near Richland. As I entered the control room, I visualized Enrico Fermi hunched over blueprints at the small table in the back, creating something that had never been done at such a scale before.
B Reactor is truly a monument to American ingenuity and what is often called the “can-do” spirit. In a few short months, the “greatest generation” turned a remote piece of shrub-steppe into the site of one of the greatest technological accomplishments of all time.
"History and place have always been a passion of mine. I’ve spent a good part of life trudging through brush and fields to find where Peo-peo-mox-mox was brutally killed or where Ranald MacDonald settled down after being freed from a Japanese prison.
I search out these places to feel what I call an “historical moment.” It’s hard to describe what that is exactly other than to say it’s an intense feeling of a sense of history. It’s as if the ghosts of those who once inhabited the site gather around me to share their joys, their fears, and their stories.
Sometimes, the historical moment feels so strong, I am overcome with emotion. The first time that happened was at Dover Green. I hadn’t really sought out that site—I was just killing time while my wife was interviewing for a job with the Delaware Department of Education.
All of a sudden, I visualized farmers, storekeepers, millers, and tavern keeps, mustering as minutemen. I could feel their fear, their anger, and their yearning for self-determination. It shook me.
It happened again when I stood in the basement of the U.S. Supreme Court looking at the Brown v. the Board of Education decision. That document demonstrated that the system could work, that government can be a great force for good, that even the most evil, institutionalized injustices could be righted. It demonstrated that Langston Hughes’s America, the one that never was, could be the America of which he dreamed.
B Reactor: The last place I was overwhelmed by an historical moment was at B Reactor on the Hanford Site near Richland. As I entered the control room, I visualized Enrico Fermi hunched over blueprints at the small table in the back, creating something that had never been done at such a scale before.
B Reactor is truly a monument to American ingenuity and what is often called the “can-do” spirit. In a few short months, the “greatest generation” turned a remote piece of shrub-steppe into the site of one of the greatest technological accomplishments of all time.
