Why Blog in the first place?

I am feeling old these days and have been particularly lucky to be a witness to history. Since childhood I have been fascinated by human events; ideology, culture, oppression, freedom etc. I have degrees in history and political science from the University of Utah and a master's degree in modern Amercan history. In my academic pursuits I studied the clash of the ideologies as a beginning. 

There have been a variety of turning points in the evolution of my thinking but of those early in my life the ones affecting me the most were those who arrogantly clung to their misinformed beliefs. One junior high teacher comes to mind who was so delusionally anti-communist that I began to question the origins of her beliefs. Had she met these awful people? How were her opinions of communists formed? What had she read that I had not? I had fortunately traveled by the time I was in my early teens and found that life was a bit more complex than represented by ideologs of all persuasions.  

I watched the Twentieth Century unfold and found some irrational need to see for myself. When I look back I saw events and places that today seem distant. In today's world Beijing is a destination at many airports but in 1965 Peking was less familiar than the moon. Today North Korea seems to be the only place with that honor and I see the same knowledge gap there as we had back in the 1960's with the People's Republic of China. 

I will be blogging about things past and present, taking from my diaries and in some cases directly from the location. With the election of Barack Obama we seem to be moving the United States into a new direction. We do not know the exact direction but we know we have turned a corner.