LITTLE ROCK — I sat in on a couple of sessions of a genealogy workshop in Fayetteville earlier in the month. The workshop was put on by folks from the special collections department at the University of Arkansas Libraries. I'd seen the notice of the meeting and thought it might give me some ideas about organizing the stack of photos I inherited from my folks.
The photos are black-and-white, and surprisingly well-documented. My brother, sister and I had taken some pains to identify the subjects of the photos while our folks were still with us, then later when we drew on our own knowledge of the extended family represented in the photos.
I came away from the workshop with what I'd wanted-ideas about how to organize the photos and protect them. (Always think "acid-free.") I also left with the unsettling news that the color photos so prized byour later generations have a short shelf life. One of the speakers suggested we'll eventually have a huge gap in the photo keepsakes handed down to later generations because color prints fade away so easily.
Having already spent the morning at an event devoted to the past, I came home to catch up on my reading. Lately, I'd taken the recommendation of our city editor at the Northwest edition and had been readingFounding Brothers, a book about the Revolutionary generation. (Thanks for the suggestion, Stephen.)
The theme of the book is how so much of what now seems inevitable in our country's history was actually up for grabs in the early days. We owe even more to the likes of Washington, Jefferson, Franklin and Hamilton than we appreciate, even when we acknowledge their foresight. Their personal relationships at a vulnerable moment in history kept the young country from falling apart, as so many others have done shortly after a successful revolution. The adage that revolutions devour their own holds true all too often. Ours was one of the rare exceptions.
Eventually, I put the book down and brought myself back into the present, switching on the TV to catch the news of the day. It's bleak.
It's disturbing to have the leader of our country talk of a possible World War III, chuckling inexplicably while doing so. It's disturbing to hear the widespread rattling of sabers over the possibility of a premeditated conflict with Iran. We've already got our hands full with two other unresolved conflicts in that part of theworld. The notion that we're even considering the possibility of taking on another war is mind-boggling. And the idea that we might initiate another war flies in the face of everything I understand about the ideals on which this country was founded.
Yet, there's plenty of backing for another war. Hardly a day goes by without the fears being stoked by some politician or other. The letters to the editor talk about the inevitability of a wider war. Sad to say, the mainstream press doesn't get it, repeating its sins offour or five years ago.
The last time I worried in print about this march toward yet another war, I was taken to task by an e-mailer for questioning the latest update of our war plans with Iran. Perfectly normal, I was told of the planning. Our military would be derelict if it didn't have those plans on the shelf, and constantly update them. We hear the same rationale again and again.
But that doesn't account for the broader context, the ever-louder banging on the drums of war, the many signs that we are seriously considering attacking another sovereign nation. The bombing plans? The latest version seems to have been put together with unusual urgency. It's enough to make me yearn for the relief of studying a little more history.
How much simpler than the present is the past. The choices of the past have been made, for good or ill. The choices we face today have yet to be decided. It's one thing to read about the decisions made by an earlier generation. Or to look at photos dating back 50-100 years and know that the crises faced by those in the pictures no longer matter to them. We live in the here and now. One day, our paths will look as inevitable as those our ancestors took appear to us. But, of course, they weren't inevitable. And neither is our own future. Now is always the moment to decide which way the future goes.
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George Arnold is opinion editor of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette's northwest edition.
Editorial, Pages 12 on 10/30/2007