History

I heard the last few minutes of an interview with Ken Burns on NPR this morning as I drove to church. Apparently, he has a documentary on Prohibition which starts tonight. Burns created a sensation with his wonderful history of baseball and since then is well respected for the work he does. Obviously, history is complex and no one perspective can do justice to all the twists and turns, but I am sure he will provide insight into the world of American some one hundred years ago.

One statement which he made took me back. He said that there was concern, based on extenisive alcohol consumption (some seven times more than today) that we were becoming a nation of drunkards. What was more upsetting, were anecdotes about the Temperance Movement. Dominated by women, he told of cases where the ladies were hosed down in the winter, as they stood outside of taverns praying. It caught my attention because it is not the sort of thing which we talk much about. It is a reminder that history is so much more than data points from the past. It is the rich, lived experience of countless souls on their own life journeys.

Burns said that when Temperance blossomed into Prohibition, one of the exceptions was houses of worship. Sacramentl usage was legal. He said that synagogues boomed, many led by rabbis with Irish names. I am not sure how widespread the phenomenon was, but no doubt it occurred with enough frequency to register as a statistical trend.

We have such a distorted view of things. We live in a time of incredible blessings. We are ignorant of life in the past. It is hard to believe that not that long ago, the New York Yankees sometimes slept in the park because it was too hot in their hotel rooms. Babe Ruth, on a mattress in the park. It was not that long ago that the flu killed twenty million people. That people were crippled for life by polio. That babies perished for lack of medical care. That people with cancer just died. It was not so long ago that fresh fruits and vegetables were available only part of the year and the term 'out of season' was in common use. School was a luxury for many, and it was not uncommon to know people who quit school in fourth or fifth grade.

History is called boring by many so they learn little or nothing about it. Unfortunately, you are allowed to have an opinoin and voice it without knowledge. I wish I knew more. Too often I am swept up in the assumption that things were 'so much better' in the past. In fact, we probably live in a much better time, for all its problems, than we can imagine. Yes, things could be better, much better, but they have been worse, much worse. Struggles and problems started in the Garden and have continued to our own day. It is good to learn a bit more about the way we were, especially if you are upset with the way we are...