It’s close to midnight, I’ve got a cocktail in me — and I’ve started a new project. Taking a few minutes away from it to jot down a few notes here on the blog. As is typical for a Late Night Rambling post, the explanation for what I’m doing is gonna be more than a little circuitous.
I used to suck at history. In some subjects, I think in words – dialogues, actually. In others, I think visually. For me, history is one of those visual subjects. In Fifth, Sixth, and Seventh grades, I went to three different schools — and missed taking geography at each one. So when I took my first serious history class in junior high, I was lost. I kept forgetting which peninsula was Spain and which one was Greece. Was shocked when I heard that the Biblical Tigris and Euphrates rivers really existed – yet still couldn’t place them anywhere real. So even though I started the class with some enthusiasm, I eventually got (quite literally) lost and was happy to (barely) pass the course.
That was Seventh Grade American History, but the pattern repeated the next two years in Western Civ I and II.
Then I got shipped off to military school, which required I actually sit in my room at night and do homework. “Well, of all the nerve,” I thought. “Now what am I going to do during 5th Period study hall?” Got bored, picked up an encyclopedia, and started to read.
World War II caught my attention for reasons I’m still not clear on. But this time, I could follow the story
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