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Anyone who has seen the movie
Jurassic Park might recall the scene when John Hammond, the
billionaire who is the mastermind behind the park, recruits several
scientists to evaluate his creation. When the scientists are sent on
a trial tour of the attraction, the dinosaurs fail to cooperate and
remain out of sight. After a few stops at different paddocks, the
scientists fail to see any dinosaurs. This prompts one of the
scientists, the cynical Dr. Ian Malcolm, to ask Hammond with all the
sarcasm that he can muster, "You do plan to have dinosaurs on your
dinosaur tour, right?"
A paraphrase of this line occurred
to me as a question I should ask the Roundtable members when I was
chosen to serve as historian for 2011-2012: "You do plan to have a
historian as your historian, right?" This is not to say that I am
not honored that the nominating committee and the members of the
Roundtable selected me for this position. Far from it, I am
enormously honored by this, and I look forward to carrying out the
duties of the Roundtable historian. That said, I have some serious
misgivings about the Roundtable's choice as its next historian.
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The search for historical understanding continues...
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For example, the Roundtable's next
historian has absolutely no training in history. Rather, I have
simply read about history over the years, in particular about the
Civil War. This makes me eminently unqualified compared to many
members of the Roundtable. Because of this, the History Briefs
for the upcoming Roundtable session will consist of anecdotes that
come from my admittedly limited knowledge of the topics that I
present. No doubt there will be errors of omission and perhaps even
outright factual inaccuracies. When these occur, I hope that these
flubs will be pointed out to me by someone with superior knowledge
of history than I possess (meaning everyone who is reading this). I
am fond of saying that I try to avoid being so old a dog that I am
unable to learn new tricks, which means that I not only accept but
welcome being informed when I am incorrect about something. (Having
raised two daughters, I have extensive experience with being told
that I am wrong.)
The choice of topics for the
monthly History Briefs will be items that I find interesting
and seem to me to be relatively obscure. This approach comes from my
desire not to hear what I have heard before, but to hear something
with which I am unfamiliar so that I can learn something new.
However, due to the aforementioned limited scope of my historical
knowledge, something that is new to me has a likely possibility to
be something well known to many others in the Roundtable. When this
happens, I ask those in attendance to simply bear with me or even
ignore my blathering altogether. (Again, having raised two
daughters, I have considerable experience with being ignored.) If
some significant oversight is noted by anyone who pays attention to
my babbling, I am only too happy to be informed about this. After
all, my monthly History Briefs ramblings will end up being
deposited on the Roundtable website. In light of all the exemplary
work that Paul Burkholder has done to make our website outstanding,
Roundtable members can view their assistance with fixing my blunders
as their contributions to presenting our best face to the cyberworld.
Finally, my selection as historian
marks the second time that the Roundtable has saddled me with the
exceedingly unenviable task of succeeding Mel Maurer. When I was
Mel's successor as president, I said at that time that I knew how
Phil Bengtson felt after Bengtson followed Vince Lombardi as coach
of the Green Bay Packers. I expect that it will not be long into my
tenure as historian that Mel's historical expertise and podium
presence are sorely missed. Unfortunately, someone has to succeed
the Abraham Lincolns who hold office, and the best that can be hoped
for by those (like me) who find themselves in that position is to do
better than Andrew Johnson.
My goal as historian is to provide
a History Brief each month that is interesting and
informative to at least one person in attendance. My hope is to
provide a History Brief that contains at least one nugget
that is interesting to most of the members in attendance. My desire
is to learn from the History Briefs even more information
than I present. If all goes well, Roundtable members might be
willing to comment about my tenure as historian with a paraphrase of
another memorable line uttered by Ian Malcolm in Jurassic Park.
This line came after the horrific encounter with the Tyrannosaurus
rex, during which one of the tour vehicles was ravaged, one of the
characters was devoured, and Malcolm broke his leg. When Malcolm,
injured and terrified, was rescued from this harrowing experience,
he referred to his host, billionaire John Hammond, and said to his
rescuers, "Remind me to thank John for a lovely weekend." If my time
as historian is worthwhile, Roundtable members may ask to be
reminded to do the same to me, and maybe they will even say it
without the sarcasm with which Malcolm coated his remark.
Editor’s note: Dave
Carrino is a former President of the Roundtable, having served
during the 2005-6 year. Although trained as a biologist, Dave’s
knowledge of the Civil War is much better than he would
acknowledge.
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