You know how you always think something was so long ago.

Yet…

It really isn´t!

Think of it. His dad was reading newspapers with articles about the battle of Trafalgar (just to name a newsworthy thing of those days).

BTW my mum just turned 84 dec 6.

And the ruins here were the handywork of my grandfather who flattened the church of Rhenen (the Netherlands) in the May Days of 1940. Not that he had something against churches, but because there was an artillery spotter of the invading Germans in the top.
Hell he was an artillery captain commanding a field battery.
A man has to do what a man has to do. One of those things that got him a Knighthood later on in life.
*grin*

Just to show that we normal mortals only have “close to us memories”. Memories like what you did, your dad did or your granddad. But sometimes generations fly through all that and come in prestine and smelling like daisy´s smack bam in the middle of us. Which is kinda refreshing.

I wonder how far removed Juanita Tudor is from Kevin Bacon.

Not as old as your Mom, but I was actually pondering this a couple days ago.  Even my own memories can be paralleled with old classic movies now and when I watch them and remember the age I was (whether toddler or older child) then compare the kinds of technology, beliefs then, clothing, cars etc., I am suddenly aware of my own history and journey.  But even worse, I remember asking my Dad ‘Tell us about the olden days’ and that was referring to his own childhood that seemed to me at the time, ancient-historical-chronicles.

What I do find even more confounding is that between his personal stories coupled with my own, more than a 100 years are covered…...........!

It is something that has always been bewildering and facsinating. But I like history. So it´s kinda close, being my work for many years. I kept time, filing history. I worked at a national daily in the documentation. So I filed and went on chases on demand from the editorial departments in the same archives we build and many others that others had.
We kept history at an almost second to second basis. And that history was always needed. We only never knew which little bit they wanted.*
And we had to go out and find it. So sometimes “blastfromthepast-blasters” fly by. And sudenlly it´s very very close. Meeting them face to face. Finding evidence in what they have kept (in actuals artefacts, memories etc. or simply going through yard after yard of boxes… searching. Opening ... reading… finding…)
And I always and stll have that wonderment when I actually hold something in my hands or read an actual document.
We always live towards the future yet live in the past somehow. And sometimes it catches up in a very very fast way.

BTW astronomy is my great secret love.

the earth will be fine

* We had a saying going something like this: “Of all that we´ve got a mere 2% might be in movement, i.e. in use, the problem is we never know what that 2% is and what from all of it they want”

Unfairly Balanced I believe I understand what you mean….....it’s a little like being a tree, a tall one still growing, but remembering that we were once just barely above the roots and now we can’t even see them but we know they are there and without them, we would not stand now or continue upward and outward. 

It’s like seeing part of ‘evolution’ in an instant.  We evolve according to what was before but we still feel as if we are touching the first stuff since we still are.

Photograph of a Revolutionary War Soldier

Born in 1749… that´s 210 years before me, yet there is photograph of the guy!

Mindblowing.

He was 103 years old when it was taken!  I also liked:  “....where he happily regaled visitors with tales of his Revolutionary War exploits until his dying day.” from the article indicating that people then were also interested in history .... they are [history stories] the roots upon which our present and future are built and which form all the other branches yet to be born.

And that´s also what keeps history very close.