BEYOND KNOWING?
Do we ever really understand the hardships experienced by those who have gone before us in the building of our nation?
Or, have we become so content in the relative comforts of present-day living to even care about what has gone before?
It is good to become aware of the events of the past and they are now available to us in so many ways. If we depend on our memory alone or that of partisan participants in many such events, we are apt to get
a warped idea of how things really were in the past.
Some may have a nostalgic tendency and tend to avoid all the unseemly features of life’s anxieties in a given era. Others may dwell too extensively on those same realities and make the past seem to have been a
time of harsh awakenings, stress and confusion.
It m might be wise to read of the past in various ways. The social or economic accounts will tell one version, the historical articles will give emphasis to patriotism and heroic deeds, cookbooks will give detailed
accounts of food-minded writers. It is also important that we read fictional accounts of the past, because therein we have a pleasant combination of reality and fantasy...not that which people did , but rather how they tried to
accomplish. Some succeeded; others failed and there is often ahint therein of what there is remaining for you and I to do. It gives us a keen awareness of the way life seemed to be viewed in the minds of people a hint much like us in
the past.
If you get the chance, either read or re-read the novel “Johnny Tremaine,” by Esther Forbes. It tells the story of the Boston Tea Party, Concord and Lexington in the early days of the America Revolution. The
events are made to live through the personalities of people caught up in the complexities of their own, personal moment of doubt and fear and joyful anticipation. Young boys almost of military age for those days, wanting to be
soldiers. Young girls with romantic ideas, older men who are both good and evil. Old women who are bossy, vindictive, loving and at times down right mean . What does the challenge of holding on to those they fought and often
died for, mean to us today?
Mary Rodd Furbee, a relative newcomer among much-needed American historical writers, presents an unusual theme intended be read primarily by young people, both girls and boys. She has centered, thus far,
on stories of the women involved in the expanding American frontier. Get a copy of her “Outrageous Women of Colonial America.” It is all about a varied group of women who went against the social patterns of their day. Furbee
has written several other books for young people “ ,”Anne Bailey, Frontier Scout” and “Shawnee Captive, The Story of Mary Draper Ingles”.
Others have followed and, to my way of thinking, they are a re-birth of a genre of literature which is much needed with our younger readers especially. The Mary Rodd Furbee series are straight forward, simply told biographies about
women of frontier America who have helped to make our nation a more worthy place in which to live. They are books which are intended for young people, but older people will find they to be worthwhile reading, too.
Make a note of it: Read - Forbes’- “Johnny Tremaine” and Mary Rodd Furbee’s ”Outrageous Women of Colonial America”. Strengthen your faith in America.
A.L.M. Sept. 8, 2002 [c-593wds]
