Tracy;

My History Professor thought 100 years was a reasonable period to wait before commenting upon an event. Sometimes I wish the television news would adheare to that concept! :)

Now we all know how biased each of the reporting networks throughout the world are. The “news” is confusing. You tend to watch and read from sources you believe in. Some sources are more objective than others. Still there are so many blanks to fill in.

When my brother and I were young (8 and 10) Colonel Tim McCoy had a television program and taught the history of America during the 19th century, along with Indian Sign Language. For many years he traveled throughout the United States and taught the American Indians Sign Language.

My brother and I met "Iron Eyes Cody" at the Boy Scout Scoutorama at the Cow Palace in San Francisco. We got to talk to him using Indian Sign Language from what we had learned from Tim McCoy. That was great fun!

American Indians made little of events. Your birthday was not important and you counted your age by how many winters you had survived. Sitting Bull was asked to describe the Battle of The Little Bighorn. He described it using four signs which meant, “The white pony soldier came here and we wiped him out”! No big deal – who needs volumes to tell the story? Yet I have read many books on the subject and it is fascinating.

Perhaps the minds of different cultures view and require knowledge of different types. For some people it seems that only basic facts such as an overview of an event is all that is required. Other people require much more detail and that is where the confusion begins.

It may be that the thought process of the American Indian can be compared to an engineer. Engineers do not like rhetoric or excessive use of details. An outline is all that most engineers demand or will tolerate. Basic facts and getting to the meat of the subject are imperative to an engineer. At least that is my experience.

Tom


>I recently heard a history professor state that when events happen, everything should be documented and first-hand accounts taped by all who were there or had knowledge of it. Then it should sit for 20 years and after that time, all of the information gathered together and looked at again with the perspective of time and other events.
>
>
>>>>History is truly written by the victors. Or even better by George Orwell in 1984 "Who controls the past, controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past".
>>>
>>>And in some cases, rewritten. :o) The Soviet Union is a perfect example. Our own textbooks in American schools is another good example. When it comes to American History you often read a different version of depending on if you went to school in the North or the South! Historians are attempting to remedy that now but not all schools have the funds for the updated textbooks. That is assuming of course that the historians that corrected the textbooks are correct!
>>
>>And what do you think, how many writers of the original documents, written immediately after the fact, are aware that they are writing history? How many of them are biased? Heck, they are in the thick of it, they have taken sides even before it happened, and they still have their own public (or superiors) to satisfy. We may gain some insight only by cross-referencing and comparing their accounts.
>>
>>As Milorad Pavich wrote in the last sentence of "Khazar Dictionary", "Truth is but a trick".