Right of Seattle: You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train

I was going to finish my update of our trip, etc. this evening...

Howard Zinn...historian, author, activist, patriot...passed away today.

When I was 18, my Uncle John and cousin Brad gave to me for my birthday a copy of "A People's History of the United States." Maybe they sensed a budding liberal...

For a long time, I put off reading it, thinking it was just another book on American history. And while I had a certain fascination with the subject, it was not something that would hold me through a nearly 700 page book (in hard cover edition). But one day I finally picked it up, and started into the introduction...

"A People's History" was an awakening for me. A seed planted that there was so much more to the world than I ever knew. Suddenly I felt an urge to understand all aspects of a story so often repeated that it had become boring. The Founding Fathers, the Constitution, the Indian wars, the Civil War, the Great Depression, the Labor Movement, World War II, Civil Rights, Vietnam...no longer would I simply accept the common stories, the common answers, the common ideals. By reexamining history, I could learn more about the present, and would be able to ask more thoughtful, more engaging questions about myself and where I might be headed in the future.

Howard Zinn was the man that made it possible. He was the ideal for those of us who felt we might be missing a large part of the story. A veteran; an educator; peaceful, intelligent, well spoken. His voice will be greatly missed.

"TO BE HOPEFUL in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness.
What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places—and there are so many—where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction.
And if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory."