Saturday, June 23, 2018

     We Are Stars and Other History Stuff


"The Earth and every living thing are made of star stuff." from Star Stuff by Stephanie Roth Sisson


Humans divide themselves into usually tidy labels and categories: Southerner or Midwesterner, rap or jazz,  Stephen Colbert or Jimmy Fallon, Colonial or mid-century ranch. It's our very own checklist of who we are or imagine ourselves to be.  We group ourselves by zip codes, religion, voting habits, ancestry, and income levels. Book groups may be made up of like-minded people who only read 18th century English literature or science fiction. And how many Thanksgiving dinners have been made tense when that otherwise quiet uncle or sister-in-law suddenly explodes into a political rant...which happens to be the exact opposite view of every other member of the family? 

"We are all connected; to each other biologically; to the Earth, chemically; to the rest of the universe, atomically. Not only do we live among the stars, the stars live within us." Neil deGrasse Tyson

We are the same, made from the same stars, and while we may try to understand each other's assorted ideas or beliefs, it can be frustrating and not illuminating when those concepts are just too unfamiliar. Taking to the street, we wave signs and shake fists. People sitting at home watching the news react by either reminding themselves to write a check because, finally, someone is making sense, or becoming nervous about those people. How many times do you cross the street to avoid a homeless person who is sitting on a curb? Or sigh in exasperation when an elderly person holds up a check out line while shakily counting out his bills and coins? At lunch, do you avoid sitting next to the needy co-worker who always seems to have family drama? 

How often do we remind ourselves that we are all made of stars?  

"Red stars are either very faint or very luminous, while the bluer a star, the more luminous it is." Robin Kerrod - Eyewitness Books Universe 


It's gotten harder to understand our neighborhoods, states, country or even ourselves. Breaking news comes at us faster, louder with bickering pundits 24 hours a day. Podcasts. Twitter. Facebook. We try to sort it out and decide where we fit in. Is this normal, we ask. And how will it all end? We worry. We get angry. We pledge to read more, to vote.

How often do we remind ourselves that we are all made of stars?  

"It takes light from distant stars billions of years to reach Earth. By the time it gets here, the stars are billions of years older than they were when the light left them. So we really see the stars as they used to be. Looking at the stars is like looking into the past." Mary Pope OsbourneMagic Tree House Fact Tracker Space


Maybe some of our questions will be answered by looking backwards. History has a way of helping to sort out the present and, perhaps, shaping the future. Our human nature being what it is, we certainly aren't the first people to feel as though we've tumbled awake, groggily asking what happened or what's wrong (expletives optional).

And how often do we remind ourselves that we are all made of stars? 

"A star is basically a clump of fusing gases giving off light." C. Saucier - Explore the Cosmos 


                           Suggested Reading


Letter from Birmingham Jail - Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

1968 - Mark Kurlansky

Hue 1968 - Mark Bowden

Team of Rivals - Doris Kearns Goodwin

Theodore Rex - Edmund Morris

Undaunted Courage - Stephen Ambrose

Guns, Germs and Steel - Jared Diamond

The Guns of August - Barbara Tuchman

What If? - Robert Cowley (editor)

The Suffragette - Sylvia Pankhurst, Emmeline Pankhurst

Twenty Years at Hull House - Jane Addams

The Complete Works of Nellie Bly - Nellie Bly

A Vindication of the Rights of Women - Mary Wollstonecraft

A People's History of the United States - Howard Zinn 
  
Playing With Fire - Lawrence O'Donnell

Grant - Ron Chernow

The Witches: Suspicion, Betrayal,and Hysteria in 1692 Salem - Stacy Schiff

The American Spirit - David McCullough

Destiny of the Republic - Candice Millard

Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee - Dee Brown

And the Band Played On - Randy Shilts

The Civil War - Shelby Foote

The Story of Civilization - Will & Ariel Durant (11 volumes)

How the Scots Invented the Modern World - Arthur Herman

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind - Yuval Noah Havari

The Written World: The Power of Stories to Shape People, History, Civilization - Martin Puchner

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