PostPoems Be Artistic. Be Creative. Be Inspired!

May we be blessed to understand 

the words of Leszek Kolakowski

Who understood how teaching history 

could take a country far….

We learn history, he said, 

not in order to know how to behave…

or how to succeed…

but to better know who we are.

May we be blessed to understand 

the words of Leszek Kolakowski

Who understood how teaching history 

could take a country far….

We learn history, he said, 

not in order to know how to behave…

or how to succeed…

but to better know who we are.

It’s great for America to savor our success in life…and the people who helped create them…

To remember our victories…and take time to celebrate them…

We are a country of the industrial revolution, 

free public schools, think of all the medical breakthroughs we’ve completed.

We landed people on the moon, were instrumental in the formation of Nato

and vital, with our allies, in the Nazi’s being defeated.

Look at our contributions to Art and Music….

and, until recently, our diverse humanitarian works for any country who might need them

If there were people going hungry in the world…we did our best to feed them.

As great as it is to acknowledge how through hard work and fate 

we triumphed over misfortune and heartache

studies show we learn much more by studying our mistakes.

Beginning with the Native nations…our history should provide

information about how we took their land, their culture……how we tried our hand at genocide.

Our history should teach us about slavery…how it will always be depraved…

how slavery is and never will be anything but horrible…for those who are enslaved.

We should learn about how they were mistreated…families torn apart and women raped

and how they were hunted down and lynched if they happened to escape.

Our history should teach us about the Japanese Americans…

sent to internment camps by other Americans without any qualms…

and of all the Japanese who died or were forever affected by the bombs.

Our history should teach us about mass shootings…how after each mass shooting is done

we offered thoughts and prayers but did noting to make safer…the purchase of a gun.

Our history should teach about the persecution of religious minorities

immigrants, LGBTQ+…and any other people who throughout our history we have spurned…

It seems when it comes to the teaching of American history…we have a lot to learn.

Which is why if we ever want to be as great a country…as patriotic as we hope to be…

we need to study our mistakes…not erase them from our history.

If we don’t learn from the mistakes teaching history would help us to work through…

imagine what could happen in this country….think of all the harm that we could do…

If we don’t learn from our history…if we sugar-coat it or think it’s of no use

we might earmark some of our own citizens for persecution and abuse.

We might use God to help us hate…treat other human beings as if about them we didn’t care…

and when our children are gunned down in our schools…instead of offering gun control

all we’d have to offer the families would be our thoughts and prayers.

 The other day we met a woman… 

who had two reactions to the shirt I happened to wear

at first she smiled…

then she walked up to us and immediately began to share…

My shirt had a mouse reading a book on the front pocket… 

this is what made her smile

but the message protesting book banning on the back of my shirt 

is what connected us for a while.

(A little history…between March and October of 1933

over 25,000 books considered un-German…were burned in Germany)

This woman was born into that book burning’s fiery aftermath.

She grew up with the loss of all that literature and art

and still remembers that part of her childhood with sorrowfulness  in her heart…

She said it was sad growing up in Germany back then…

and once the scourge was over she thought it would never happen again. 

(A little more history: just as difficult to understand…

Since July of 2021 15,940 books across 43 states and 415 school districts In America…have been banned)

A few times while she was talking…

her eyes welled up and her beautiful voice would break

She couldn’t understand how America didn’t learn from Germany’s mistakes.

(A final historical note:

Hitler and his Nazi philosophy (which she hoped would fade into obscurity

was based on power, militarism, expanding his kingdom and racial purity.)

She said, “Good and evil down through the millennia have always been competing

and it’s up to us to do everything we can to stop evil history from repeating.”

So before we commit another Holocaust…or start another senseless war…

instead of listening to our politicians…

perhaps we should listen to the people who have lived through this before.

Today as we traveled from Michigan into Canada

across the twin cities of Salt Ste. Marie….

on the 300 miles of this journey…we learned a little more history….

The name Canada most likely came from the Huron-Iroquois word Kanata 

meaning village or settlement…

A frenchmen used it to name the entire country 

before the Hurons could tell him exactly what it meant.

We are currently near Lake Ontario which also got it’s name from the Iroquois.

The legend says from an Iroquois chief’s daughter

who when she saw the lake said kandario…which means sparkling water.

We have been on Lake Superior…named Gitchi-Gami by the Ojibwe

this means Big Sea Water…and she is a beautiful lake

In Longfellow’s poem Hiawatha…he called it Gitchi-Gumi by mistake.

We have felt the waters of Lake Michigan…a little boat trip we did take…. 

the Anishinabe called it mishigami …which simply means…big lake

We have driven my Lake Huron another beautiful place to be.

The Wyandot called it karegnondi which roughly translated means

freshwater sea

.

And we spend the next 2 days on Nipissing Lake…meaning little water

A name the Ojibwe chose to keep

because the crystal clear waters of this lake are not so very deep

It seems all around us on this trip…we’ve seen and tried to understand

how we travel over the footprints or on the shoulders

of those who first walked this land.

We have gained a new appreciation…of all they saw

the mountains, the rivers, the lakes…the plains and the buffalo too

of how they lived…of their philosophy…and of all they have gone through,

We offer them our thanks 

we only wish we could go back in time…and change our history….

and we wonder if things had played out differently….

what kind of  beauty in our world the would see.