Thanks to The Banana’s History Day project, I now know more about Guglielmo Marconi’s wireless telegraph and the Wireless Ship Act of 1910 than I ever thought possible. History Day is so educational, and so, so much work. The Banana has been working for weeks and week and weeks nonstop every second she’s not doing homework, practicing instruments or swimming. It is a ridiculous amount of work, but so worth it in the end, because I have never encountered another project that prepares you for the academic life of college more than History Day. This project simply requires everything: historical research, understanding primary and secondary sources, proving a thesis, learning how to quote things and cite sources, make an annotated bibliography, organize information in an appealing way, etc.
I learned about Ivan the Terrible. He was simply really awful. My study buddy and I were exploring medieval Russian history.
I also got so drawn into a book about Narcissa Whitman who traveled the Oregon Trail only to meet a tragic and gruesome end that I might have forgotten to pick up The Banana from swim practice. Oops. I found Narcissa Whitman to be rather unlikable and so many things about her disturbed me. I think she is definitely the kind of person that you need to look at through historical eyes: much of what she did that feels very offensive maybe wasn’t offensive by the standards of her little world. Regardless, she was most certainly NOT a culturally sensitive person. I’m still churning through some parts of what I read in my brain, and it leaves me a little queasy.
The Banana and I combed through numerous volumes of the Congressional Record from 1910 to find some information she needed for her History Day project. I now know more about what Congress was discussing in 1910 than a large portion of the population! Ha! Unfortunately we never really found exactly what we were looking for, but in the process of looking it became very apparent to me that by reading how senators debated issues and spoke about matters at hand and the dialogs that ensued, it was easy to see the personalities of the representatives shining through. Some hurled insults. Some were deceptively charming. I was kind of surprised how the Congressional Records actually captured the uniqueness of the people speaking.
If you eat birthday cake outside in negative eight degree temperatures, it may freeze on your fork before you get it to your mouth.
My study buddy and I read a great deal about space exploration this month, and it really struck me just how trepidatious those missions to the moon really were. Since I have lived my whole life knowing that the United States put men on the moon, I somehow missed just how dangerous and unpredictable early space exploration really was, and with that understanding comes the realization that the achievements that have been made are truly extraordinary.
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