I’ve always wished I had the chance to meet Abraham Lincoln, maybe when he was a budding lawyer in Springfield, Illinois, or debating Stephen A. Douglas during his (unsuccessful) run for senator of Illinois in 1858. Or perhaps five years later when he delivered the profound Gettysburg Address on that Pennsylvania battlefield that continues to shape our understanding of democracy and America’s promise. Or even to be there on that terrible April night at the Ford’s Theater when Our American Cousin was on stage and John Wilkes Booth committed the world-altering crime that ended the life of our greatest president. Could I have stopped Booth if I saw him coming?
I also would love to walk the streets of New York and visit homes in the 1880s as the early expressions of our modern world could be seen. In that period, there was an excitement in the air as people experienced the arrival of new technologies that were changing lives for the better. How about an evening with Thomas Alva Edison in early September 1882 after he first flipped the switch inaugurating electric power and light there? We could walk together and watch as New Yorkers listened to his other recent invention, the phonograph.
Maybe I could linger until the 1890s to see some of those early “horseless carriages” roll down the street. I admit that I’m drawn to the flourishes and details of Edwardian fashion, which was all the rage: high collars and colorful vests, bow ties and even top hats or derbies. A side trip to the Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893 would be a perfect way to see how millions of Americans who visited that world’s fair first experienced the dream of electric light (over 100,000 incandescent lamps!).
I used to think that I wanted to travel to Berlin in the late 1920s and stick around into the 1930s, both to experience the creative vibrance of Berlin between the wars and better understand how it all went so terribly wrong. Didn’t people know and feel what was coming? Couldn’t they grasp that too many people were just standing by as the brutality of the Nazi regime rose into dominance? Didn’t some vividly understand that they had to do whatever they could to slow or stop the emerging menace? How long did it take for sensible people to realize their country had gone mad?
Of course, living in America now, I feel less need to time travel to Germany. We now have the chance to witness how it happened there, how it could happen here as people have lost their minds—and whether good and decent people can still bend this terrible trajectory before it’s too late. Is there really a majority that support installing a violent, fascist madman because they’re convinced he’ll lower the price of food and gas? (I don’t think so.)
Now that I think about it, I’d really love to stop by Apple Records at 3 Saville Row, London, just in time to climb on the roof and watch The Beatles’ final live performance on January 30, 1969. Is that too much to ask?
What about you? Where would you travel back in time? Maybe there’s one overpowering place and time that draws you or perhaps, like me, it’s impossible to pick just one.
As always, I look forward to reading your thoughts and the opportunity for this community to learn from each other. Please do be respectful in your comments. Trolling will not be tolerated.
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*Image: Engraving of Grand Street in New York by William Allen Rogers for Harper’s, July 1889, via Getty Images.
As a Black woman there are no past times in American history that I would like to visit.
If I could go to the Bahamas in 1492 and get the indigenous people to destroy Columbus and his ships, that would be a good deed.
If there were a period in the past I’d like to visit it might be the reign of Cleopatra in Egypt - to serve as an advisor and steer her away from danger perhaps.
One good deed that I wish I could perform for this country would be to return to 2000 in Florida and properly design the ballots so that Bush could never be placed in office and thereby could never appoint the traitor Justice Alito.
Or maybe go to the NYTimes newsroom in 2016 and stop the ridiculous attacks on Hillary Clinton and focus instead on the despicable character of one DJT, which the Times was well aware of but ignored. Then again if I could go back to 2008 or 2012 and get President Obama to appoint a Democratic FBI director to prevent James Comey’s sabotage of Hillary’s campaign that too would serve us well.
Sigh.
I guess I’d rather fix current disasters than fantasize about past periods when the likelihood of my having a good life as a black female would be slim to none.
Yes, can you go back to 2000 and fix those ballots? We likely wouldn’t have had 9/11, wouldn’t have gone to war with Iraq and Afghanistan—and would have confronted climate change decades ago.
I’ve been thinking about Clinton’s impeachment. From this point in history I think Monica Lewinsky was not protected enough.
What if he had been convicted? Gore would have become president and stayed in office for at least a full term of his own. Our environmental issues would not have become a dire as they are.
I was going to say something similar. As a woman (unless I were an invisible spectator) there are very few inviting times for me to travel to, even temporarily. I would perhaps like to march once with and then congratulate the Suffragettes and immediately pop back to my own timeline.
I third this opinion. While I love history, history has not loved women too incredibly much. And being an "uppity woman" I would be in danger for my life from day one. *sigh*
Interesting thoughts about going back in time but I can tell you as a woman -we don't want to go back -we don't want to go backwards we don't want slavery - constant pregnancy -my father's mother had 15 children- think about it -15 children!! No choice!
Yes my grandmother was married off at 17 to a man with four children from two wives who died in childbirth and she had her first child on her first wedding anniversary at 18 so I guess it's lucky for me that she had 11 live births because my dad was her 11th. And number 15 of the children she raised
Right? Few choices, if any. My grandmother was the 18th child, her mother died soon after (no surprise). Only 13 survived to adulthood. Infant mortality was rampant.
Well "Mike Hammer" is a suitable name for that imaginary journey, for sure. Where's Micky Spillane on this?
What a coincidence: I have the DVD in the player all ready to resume a rewatch of a film I must have seen either in an Iowa City movie theater essentially "on" the university campus as an impressionable eight-year-old kid, or at the Varsity next to the Drake campus, summer of 1960.
The Time Machine (also marketed as H. G. Wells' The Time Machine) is a 1960 American period post-apocalyptic science fiction film based on the 1895 novella of the same name by H. G. Wells. It was produced and directed by George Pal, and stars Rod Taylor, Yvette Mimieux, and Alan Young. The story is set in Victorian England and follows an inventor who constructs a machine that enables him to travel into the distant future. Once there, he discovers that mankind's descendants have divided into two species, the passive, childlike, and vegetarian Eloi and the underground-dwelling Morlocks, who feed on the Eloi. [More]
The film was originally released on August 17, 1960, and was distributed by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.[2] It received the Academy Award for Best Special Effects[5] for its time-lapse photographic effects, which show the world changing rapidly as the time traveler journeys into the future.
And just this morning I was thinking that after a few months on Substack nobody picked up on the Mickey Spillane connection and there you were! The 1960 Time Machine Morlocks always scared the bejesus out of me.
It's Art-a-Whirl weekend* here in "Mipples," as a friend called it just for the slight shock value, but these Twin Cities and the state routinely nourish a certain degree of general nous - more theater than anywhere outside of the coasts, things like that.
Yeah the Morlocks, excellent sci-fi fantasy apocalyptic film villains! This film has aged well.
"Art-A-Whirl is a self-directed open studio tour throughout all of Northeast Minneapolis, with over 1,300 artists participating at 100 sites over the course of three days. In addition to interacting directly with artists and their work, visitors can experience art demos, activities, performances, and music. Northeast Minneapolis is also home to dozens of restaurants and breweries.
When is Art-A-Whirl?
May 17—19, 2024.
Where is Art-A-Whirl?
All over! Art-A-Whirl happens at artist studio buildings, galleries, businesses, and even homes during the weekend. You can use NEMAA’s Art-A-Whirl Map to navigate the event, our online Directory to find artists you want to visit, and our Activities page to find info about demos, performances, and more." [More} It's practically unique, more large urban areas should maybe borrow the idea!
An example of the artists there, a woman I met when we were both students all these years ago at Macalester, as influential on my approach to life as anyone I have ever known:
We saw a bunch of excellent films there, that is, a crowd of neighborhood kids or just myself. The Wrong Box* is one, jeez I learned a new word, "Tontine," it helped prep Des Moines for Iowa Public Broadcasting showing Monty Python's Flying Circus; also The World of Henry Orient**, that was a revelation to me vis-a-vis female fans, their wiles and hyper-romantic adulation of, in this case, a classical music performing artist. It was good (is good) to have a movie theater playing a mix of Hollywood / mainstream and foreign films. No wonder there was a battle to keep it from going under. Look at the cast in TWB, whoa!
The World of Henry Orient is a 1964 American comedy-drama film directed by George Roy Hill and starring Peter Sellers, Paula Prentiss, Angela Lansbury, Tippy Walker, Merrie Spaeth, Phyllis Thaxter, Bibi Osterwald, and Tom Bosley. It is based on the novel of the same name [Wikidata] by Nora Johnson, who co-wrote the screenplay with her father, Nunnally Johnson.
The original story was inspired in part by Nora Johnson's own experiences as a schoolgirl, as well as by a real-life incident involving singer Tony Bennett and two teenage fans.[citation needed]
I wonder if the ending was meant to mean "Mankind just won't learn from History!" or "Here goes again" or maybe, tastelessly, what it seemed to suggest which was that the only directives and narratives Mankind needs is in the Christian Bible.
Not from HG Wells - anyway the conclusion would be the hero returning to lead the oppressed Eloi to conquer the Morlocks, where's that in the Xtian Bible (I mean is it in some Gnostic gospel I missed out on?) It's almost more like revolutionary independence movements! George would be the Eloi's Bolivar or our 1776 revolutionaries, my own direct ancestors were in on that [Major Eleazer Curtis II, and were also Christians, but I think the Christian background was overwhelmed by motivations like what's summed up in Paine's Common Sense*!}
If you're talking about consistent "mitigated pacifism," maybe. And evolving beyond warfare, but that's evolution, science, rational ethics and morality. No particular need for any particular brand of religion.
I think most of our progress over centuries has required rational humanists defanging religion, ending most religious wars. The fanatics running Gaza have an entire religious brand of Islam, not any kind of mystical Sufism, but the most fanatical interpretation. Sri Lanka had to deal with the Hindu-Buddhist religious war for decades, no religion or region seems immune.
Maybe Taoism is a counter-example of sorts, but then the first question is, is Taoism a religion or a philosophy? It seems so syncretic and mystical yet explicitly rejects doctrinal dogmatism - we do get that in Christian mysticism, or Jewish teachers like Martin Buber, but that's not the mainstream.
Common Sense[1] is a 47-page pamphlet written by Thomas Paine in 1775–1776 advocating independence from Great Britain to people in the Thirteen Colonies. Writing in clear and persuasive prose, Paine collected various moral and political arguments to encourage common people in the Colonies to fight for egalitarian government. It was published anonymously on January 10, 1776,[2] at the beginning of the American Revolution and became an immediate sensation.
It was sold and distributed widely and read aloud at taverns and meeting places. In proportion to the population of the colonies at that time (2.5 million), it had the largest sale and circulation of any book published in American history.[3] As of 2006, it remains the all-time best-selling American title and is still in print today.[4]
***** OK, so I'm a frustrated would-be professor, so sue me!
Excuse me, I was referring to the original movie and the conclusive scene where the protagonist goes back to the past and before he returns to the future he goes through his book shelf and grabs a Bible before hopping into the machine. The camera zooms in on the Bible in his hand, thus an important statement. I was questioning what the statement was. That's going on my memory of the last scenes of the 1960s movie.
This bothered me at the time, I don't remember why, but it stayed with me all my life. Later in life it brought to mind Christian indoctrination, though in the 1960s I wasn't even mildly concerned about indoctrination and was still trying to figure things out. I was 14 yrs old, more or less. I was raised in a devout Catholic household and still going to church with my nine siblings.
So, if you don't mind, I was just crudely putting my inexact thoughts out there. I'm not a theologian or have any 'credentials', just an opinion. Theories are what people with PhD's and the like have, opinions are what I have.
Oh now I get it, I just looked at the stuff you've been re-posting, it all makes sense - if you have opinions, EllenMHa, what good are facts, right? So you can swallow the genocide smear against Israel [Hamas is based on their genocidal goals], the apartheid smear, all of it, no wonder the facts about how that film ends are subject to propagandistic reinvention ad libitum.
Some of the stuff you have restacked is raving level nonsense on stilts, ok, First Amendment and all that.
1. “Genocide” refers to the physical destruction of an entire group in whole or in part that has been targeted on the basis of its identity. This is not Israel’s objective in Gaza.
Raphael Lemkin, a Polish lawyer of Jewish descent, introduced the term genocide in 1944 to refer to events including the Nazis’ systematic extermination of Jews.
Lemkin explained the need for a new legal term to describe this horror, saying: “there has been no serious endeavor hitherto to prevent and punish the murder and destruction of millions.... there was not even an adequate name for such a phenomenon.”
What You Need to Know About the Latest International Court of Justice Action in the Case Against Israel
The United Nations General Assembly recognized genocide as a crime under international law in 1946 and it was codified in the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide in 1948.
The Convention defines genocide as the commission of grave harm against members of a national, ethnic, racial or religious group - such as by killing, causing serious physical or mental harm, inflicting conditions that bring about physical destruction, imposing measures to prevent births or forcibly taking away children - with the intent to destroy the group as such.
Genocide means targeting members of a group because of their group identity and not something they are individually thought to have done.
Israel’s war is against Hamas: Israel is not seeking to destroy the Palestinian people or the Palestinian population of Gaza, which is what would need to happen in order to correctly apply the term “genocide.” Israel’s leaders have repeatedly asserted that their campaign in Gaza is solely against the terrorist organization Hamas. In fact, this type of military campaign is the exact opposite of reflecting an attempt to eliminate the Palestinian population.
****** [More] Ellen, I will only take you seriously from now on if you can put up some kind of cogent, lucid, relevant rebuttals in your own words to these five points. Otherwise you're just repeating Hamas talking points, in effect. Not only that, I would LOVE to see those hypothetical rebuttal arguments - I am open to rational persuasion.
You are OVER THE TOP in your replies here. I know you're a very very passionate person, but your passion is misplaced. I never thought it posted anything like that. You need to go to a lecture and argue with a professor or something like that.
Your comments are totally off the mark and I tried to let you know that my comment was JUST a quip. Calm down.
The camera never "zooms in on the Bible in his hand," either! He doesn't "go through his bookshelf," he hauls the machine to ready it and zooms off. I just checked to see if I was distracted somehow, but not so: that scene doesn't exist.
In fact the mystery is which three books he did take along, I would suggest any version of any religious text would be de trop, so maybe Shakespeare, Darwin and Marx - that would fit in with HG Wells much better. No Christian allegories amongst his dozens of books!
And what good would it do to try to drag ancient mythology into the realms of the Eloi?
Even the so-called "Golden Rule" is useless, as satirized by George Bernard Shaw:: "Do not do unto others as you would have them do unto you - their tastes may not be the same"!
It's even worse than that: sadists and serial killers could apply the Golden Rule's raw template consistently, so the term "tastes" is very anodyne.
Misquoting Jesus in the Bible - Professor Bart D. Ehrman
Bart D. Ehrman 164K subscribers
2,249,559 views Nov 3, 2013
Heyns Lecture Series at Cubberley Auditorium, Stanford University Campus, Wednesday, April 25, 2007. Lecture on "Misquoting Jesus" a textual criticism of Biblical manuscript tampering. From the book "Misquoting Jesus: Scribes Who Altered Scripture and Readers Who May Never Know."
Bart D. Ehrman is the James A. Gray Distinguished Professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He came to UNC in 1988, after four years of teaching at Rutgers University. At UNC he has served as both the Director of Graduate Studies and the Chair of the Department of Religious Studies. A graduate of Wheaton College (Illinois), Professor Ehrman received both his Masters of Divinity and Ph.D. from Princeton Theological Seminary, where his 1985 doctoral dissertation was awarded magna cum laude.
By the way, I commented that I was referring to what I "remembered" from watching the movie 50 more or less years ago. Maybe my "perception" of that scene zoomed in on the bible. All I remember is not liking it at 14 years old at a time I wasn't overtly questioning religion's validity or role in people's lives. But there we have another contentious issue which is did I really think that about religion at the time or did I think it later but insert it into that scene from my memory.
I'm sure you know about the unreliability or malleability of memories. Such as there are people that swear they remember being born or being in a crib and being able to describe the room in detail or whatever. The debate being did the subject really remember that from that age or insert these memories or from their adult memory.
So he had a copy of one version of the Bible, that's what I was pointing out, he's a hero on a quest throughout the movie, and maybe preparing to cite the OT, who knows? But HG Wells was far beyond those superstitions, so possibly the other two volumes were Darwin and another science text, the hero is a scientist, an inventor.
Opinions ARE theories, though - you have your theories and I have mine. Chacun a son gout!
The scientific hero is not about to impose fascistic theocracy, right? Based on the preposterous theoretical claim that "the only theories and directives Mankind [???} needs is in the Christian Bible!"
Again: WHICH "Bible"? There's not even agreement within the texts, biblical hermeneutics won't abolish the contradictions. So that's already tendentious. Allow me to completely reject your theory about the film's ending [although he may have grabbed a copy of the Bible thinking the Eloi were too beaten down to immediately evolve their own rational code of ethics], George wasn't about to destroy their spirit with dogmatic bilge!
Wells was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature four times.[10]
Wells's earliest specialised training was in biology, and his thinking on ethical matters took place in a Darwinian context.[11] He was also an outspoken socialist from a young age, often (but not always, as at the beginning of the First World War) sympathising with pacifist views.[12][13] In his later years, he wrote less fiction and more works expounding his political and social views, sometimes giving his profession as that of journalist.[9]
H.G. Wells is an author I well respect. It's possible that the scene I remember from the 'movie' wasn't even in the book. I don't know.
A lot of movies or TV shows push God or Spirituality. That's one of the reasons I stopped watching. Every damn thing I enjoy turns into a God musing or whatever at some point. It's annoying.
When I said "people with PhDs or the like have a theory and people like me just have opinions" I was poking fun at some people's view of whose opinions matter and referring to the Scientific method at the same. I thought it was clever (I laughed anyway, seems if I don't laugh at own my jokes who will? ;-) )
By the way, I was just positing that that scene could have been "Hey, religion and it's craziness will be Good for the future of the humanity." or "Ha Ha. Religion may have been what destroyed the world let's do it again."
You are over qualified, I think, for a debate with me. I would have to go read a bunch of books or go to college to debate you. You win.
I'd go back to the 1787 for the Constitutional Convention and get myself on the “Grand Committee on Postponed Questions” and do everything I could to eliminate the proposed Electoral College.
I would be happy to sit in and listen to the Constitutional Convention. What was the country that the "Founding Fathers" really envisioned? What did they intend? As a woman, I couldn't expect to have any say, but maybe I could explain the intent later.
First, I would be with Ulysses S Grant at Appomattox. I would illustrate to him the devastating and horrific consequences of NOT hanging Lee and Davis. And ready to hang Nathan Bedford KKK Forrest, et all.
Secondly, I would need a significant albeit even temporary brain upgrade from my SB Physics. Then I would attend the 1927 Solvay conference with Einstein, Bohr, Plank, Heisenberg, de Broglie, Curie.
I know it’s been said often but if I could’ve traveled back in time, I would’ve killed Hitler in 1933
As a daughter of Holocaust survivors, I lost over 90% of my family
On the other hand, I would be speaking Polish and probably still living in Lodz 😀
But when you look at the carnage from World War II, I do not think Japan would have bombed. Pearl Harbor had Hitler and Germany been stopped before 1939.
I would like to travel back to Dallas on November 21, 1963 and try to prevent Oswald from completing his date with destiny the following day. Likewise, I would travel to Los Angeles on June 4, 1968 to prevent Sirhan from doing the same thing early the next morning. The assassinations of JFK and RFK changed the course of history for this country and the world. If only they had both lived.
Steve I am re-reading the extraordinary book of James W. Douglas, JFK and the Unspeakable, if you havent read it, you should, despite being heartbreaking it is also inspiring on all the things John Kennedy wanted to achieve. And you are right, it changed history. Read the book, you will not regret it..
Semi-related, I would like to go back a little further to stop the media of that day from comparing Jack and Jackie to the film ''Camelot'', literally inevting the concept of the ''imperial presidency" which years later Richard Nixon used - ''if the president does in, it's not a crime", and others since then, like Regan and President Cheney, and of course Trump.
Note also the unwavering Kennedy effect, which has now come back to haunt us wirh RFK Jr.
LA County Medical Examiner Thomas Noguchi carried out an excruciatingly careful autopsy and did extensive testing - the shot that killed RFK was fired at point blank range, several dozen witnesses placed Sirhan at no closer than 3-5 feet, not 3-5 inches.
Last minute Ace Security guard Thane Eugene Cesar's weapon was never even exaxmined.
I would go much further back in time. I have always been fascinated by Ancient Egypt, since I was a child. I’d love to return to the height of the New Kingdom, perhaps the reign of Tutankhamen’s father, and see what it was truly like. See what historians and archeologists have correctly deduced and what they’ve gotten wrong.
My dream trip to the past would be to stand on the banks of the Mighty Columbia and see her majesty before so many dams slowed her flow. Near where the Deschutes River drains, I’d watch the indigenous people stand at Celilo Falls catching salmon, then in huge abundance. Today the Columbia no longer is mighty, the once beautiful Celilo Falls lost underwater from installation of another dam. Since time travel is only a dream, I’ll take satisfaction in having seen both the headwaters and mouth of her, as well as many places along her path.
Its starting to look like she will again be mighty. The native tribes and the BLM have a tentative agreement to remove some of the dams, beginning ( I think) with ICE Harbor. Our Native Peoples are fighting for the Salmon.
I had an English teacher in high school who used to act out bits of history sometimes from literature sometimes straight from history books. I still remember him jumping on a desk one day to act out the storming of the Bastille- Robert Dober- the best!
Tolstoy leaves that precise description of Bonaparte's visage to his readers in War and Peace, but something of the shock you allude to here is palpable.
I would love to meet Samuel Langhorne Clemens (Mark Twain) and Senator Robert F. Kennedy. Both are heroes of mine. I'm a writer and Mark Twain's writing inspired me. I'm a progressive DEM political activist, and RFK inspired me. They inspire me still.
I agree with Trish, also being a woman and a doctor. I can't think of a time in history for me to visit enjoyably and safely. (Atho I would like to go back to meet and talk with my parents before I was born.)
I don’t think there’s a particular point in time in history that I’d like to see…but I would like to revisit times in my own life. Specifically, I’d like to go back to my first trip to Paris to study Esthétique at L’Ecole Jean D’Estrees, which no longer exists. What a fabulous time and experience that was, walking the streets of Paris in the middle of the fashion boom, just soaking up all that creativity. I’d also like to go back to my Le Petit Brouard, a property that my father-in-law owned with two spring-fed lakes and my first ever experience of a real vegetable garden that he tended so lovingly. I miss weekends at the vineyards with the old French people, sitting in a cool cave in the evening, drinking new wine, telling amazing and harrowing stories of WWII and singing songs…the acoustics were incredible! I could go on and on…but I’d like to go back to the French countryside in the Loire Valley again.
Why not? I have been in Paris for two years. Loire valley is not far by train there are lots of retirees from the US calling france home now (as I do).
If I could go back in time, it would be to peek briefly seek out my grandpa on the WWI battlefields of northern France . He hailed from Eastport ME and abandoned college to become an AFS ambulance driver volunteer in the war. When he returned home he was seriously depressed for several years, maybe with PTSD who knows. He almost broke off his relationship with my grandma because of his inability to find work.
We have photos of him in France from that period. He had hoped to stay on, but he couldn’t get employed. He had wanted to promote US French relations. I would go back to tell him I am now living his dream … and I think he would be proud!
I can say I’m a bit jealous! So happy for you! My husband is from France so we still have family there, and plan to visit next year! It’s really my second home…and has been for many years.
There’s an ice-breaker question that is a version of this. Who from history would you want to have dinner with? My answer to both questions are variations on a theme. The person to have dinner with would be one of my ancestors from the 1300-1400’s. That is also the time period I would like to be able to visit - to see what life was really like for “the common folk” - those about whom little is written.
I had a list of three people I would have liked to meet - Agatha Christie, Bill Russell, and Walter Cronkite. Didn't meet them, but the list shows my varied interests. Sadly, I would go back to my childhood in the forties and fifties. It was idyllic, without the worries of my parents. It makes me, as a woman, less than courageous.
Paris when Gertrude Stein held her literary salons.
1920s when my mother’s 16 year old brother twisted his ankle playing baseball to stop the doctor from stupidly puncturing the swelling with a unsanitized needle, leaving him to die of sepsis.
1300s to meet the purported Genoese soldier who started my fathers direct line of descendants.
But yes, as others have said, as a woman there are few times in history where I wouldn’t have to have feared for my life or my children’s lives.
lol, All right since many of you are ready to take on DJT as a child, I shall look at other options !
I would love to live in France in the 18th century since I love the arts and architecture of that time, but since I love taking showers I think the lack of running water is an obstacle.... lol
Being originally French and a painter, I would like to return to the 20s and 30s in France when Picasso and Braque and Magritte in Belgium lived, I am obsessed with what Picasso did in 1923 when he lived with Olga the Russian dancer. To me this is the peak of Picasso, this is really the most beautiful things he did. So I would love to meet all these people. I think also I want to meet Hemingway and Scott F when they lived in France... lol. I would love to live in the movie "Midnight in Paris " !!!!
Imagine listening to Hemingway and Scott F. !! lol
ohh you are so right on the music 💕🌿..... Just sublime.
The scenes where Yves Heck plays Cole Porter.. and the evening where Owen Wilson watches Sonia Rolland plays Josephine Baker dancing at the night club... luscious !!
I would like to be in Paris when it was liberated & our soldiers cheered. Likewise on the NY dock when "the boys" came home, then, Times Square to see the famous kiss. 😘
My mom was there - in Times Square celebrating. My dad wouldn’t get home till later. Just knowing his ship wasn’t the target of submarines allowed her to breathe she said.
If forced to pick one time, 5000 bce. I'd like to wander past the folks putting up Stonehenge, and causally ask "What's this all about?". I'd probably have hundreds of more questions, but that would do for a start.
I was fascinated by Helen Keller as a girl. I read a biography of her, and as part of a Girl Scout badge, fashioned a new cover for the book out of felt and cardboard. I had it for years. To this day, if I could spend time with an historical person, Helen would be top of my list with Eleanor Roosevelt second.
I’ve always been fascinated with 1900 through WWII in Paris, Vienna, and Berlin. Bakewell’s The Existentialist Cafe and Illies 1913 and Love in Time of Hate capture much of the allure those years hold for me. Finally I would have wished to have been a student of Jacques Ellul. Thanks for asking.
I've been so lucky to have lived the past 44 years with my wife that I can't think of any better time in history than the day we met. If I could, I would go back to that day and do it all over again. Our history isn't over either! I hope we can keep making our history for many years to come.
Though I'm totally in love with Italy and much of Europe I think if I could time travel I would go back to China or Japan I would love to attend a few banquets in China and wander around the woods in Japan on a spring evening. Everything in bloom. Peaceful. Makes me yearn for a time when we will have peace again in the USA!
Maybe Memphis, Tennessee on April 4, 1968 early in the morning before the tragic event could take place, so I could point out where the escaped convict James Earl Ray (who had been on the run) will be staying and ultimately taking the fall for another intricate black ops inside job, post November 22, '63. I'd love to piss off that psychotic J Edgar Hoover, and actually Allen Dulles as well.
Maybe that way, the rot that we have accumulated since that time wouldn't be as bad as it is now, and a great and courageous leader could've lived to see his grandchildren.
I was visiting my aunt in Memphis, she was to take me to the greyhound bus station. We were heading to the car, when my uncle came running out of the house. He said to get back in the house. He had just heard on the radio that someone had tried to assassinate Dr. Martin Luther King. Soon after we heard he had died. I was in fourth grade, playing outside during recess when our president was cruelly murdered. I was the only Catholic child in a small rural school in Mississippi. I felt isolated and alone. My father had died three and half years before, I took the death of President Kennedy personally. As a child, I identified with both the children of the president and Dr. King, their deaths and the death of Robert Kennedy, brought back the pain and anguish of my father’s death. He committed suicide at Fort Bragg. At that time the Army didn’t recognize PTSD. I would give anything to be able to have stopped the timeline that led to the deaths of all four men.
I would have loved to work in labs or on college campuses with other women. That was fun during my time and must have been thrilling in past times. Fascinating discoveries!
In response to your question, I too have been asking myself where and when would I have liked to have lived? Also, one other question, how would I have reacted to the happenings of those times? Would I have been brave enough to step forward and speak up?
There are two time periods that fascinate me and make my imagination run wild. The first is Spain between 750 to 950, a period of scholarship and poetry and amazing architecture. Though not totally a time of religious tolerance, it was a period when cross cultural conversations were held.
It was also a time when women mathematicians, scientists, writers, and inventors had some opportunities to bloom. I would love to be able to sit with Labana of Cordoba in the 10th century, share tea listen to her talk about her ideas.
Contrasting Spain of the 10th century with Hilda’s of Whitby England, I would have loved to have been able to walk along the shore with Abbess Hilda, and listened as she talked to the men that sought her advice. Abbess Hilda fascinates me, because a woman in the Christian church at that time came up against a church and polity that didn’t necessarily value women; even defining women as the source of evil.
I would also liked to be there when Æthelflæd became Queen and ruler of Mercia, she led her people against Viking raids and was critical to the unification of England in the late 9th century. She was the only English woman, unchallenged as a ruler, until the 16th century.
To have first hand knowledge and be able to compare and contrast the lives of women during the medieval period, women who came from different parts of the world and different cultures, makes my mind spin.
The second time and place I would like visit, is broad, the Edwardian period and the periods between and during WWI and WWII.
As a woman and as a lover of literature and art, to be in Paris between the wars, to have conversations with poets, novelists, philosophers, and political theorists of that time, makes my heart pound.
To call out Hemingway on his misogyny. To wander from cafe to cafe, meeting writers, musicians, and painters I admire. To watch as the visual arts evolved from impressionist to cubist. To observe the beginning of the modernist period in dance, theatre, and poetry. To be there as workers strive for fair wages and safer working conditions.
I thrill at the thought of listening to Virginia Woolf read aloud from Three Guineas. Hearing her call out Britain’s leaders, pointing out White Male Leaders’ hypocrisy. Asking them how they can they call out the oppression and fascism abroad when it lives in the very heart of England, and in the U.S.
The shadows of the prejudice and narrow mindedness of the first half of the 1900s looms over us today.
I fear - the loss freedom to make decisions about our bodies, the loss of the gifts that a diversity of thought, beliefs, and perspectives bring to our nation. The gains of the last fifty years seem to be sliding away.
I wonder if I would have been brave enough in the 1920s and 1930s to stand up to prejudice and fascism? Would I have been willing to stand with the oppressed? Would I have taken to the streets with my sister suffragettes? Would I have fought for a woman’s right to vote, own property in her own right, and to make decisions about her body? Would I have hidden those hunted down by Nazi Germany, as they invaded my country?
I would like to think I would be a resistance fighter; that I would have provided a refuge for those who were being hunted down and killed; and I would like to see my self as someone who stood up and spoke out against prejudice and oppression in all its forms, no matter the consequence.
As I read and listen to the hateful vitriol being spewed from a multitude sources today, I believe I do stand up and speak up.
Even so, for me the more important question is how do I make a bigger difference? How do I bring together people who care about what is happening in our country? How do we take action against the growing threat to democracy? How do I provide a safe space for people to share their thoughts and experiences?
I don’t want to wait until it is too late.
My mother always said, we must own our complete history, the beautiful and the ugly, the glorious and the shameful. We must learn our complete history, and accept how that history has benefited some and relegated many to a place in society where it is impossible to thrive.
I believe in the tenets written down in our nations most treasured documents, but at the same time I realize that not everyone has benefited. Overtime, we as a nation have striven to improve and extend the rights and privileges that once were only given to a select group.
I hate the fact that there is a movement a foot to retrench into an idyllic and mythical past, a past that never existed, a fantasy of our nation’s history.
It breaks my heart that many of our fellow citizens are swallowing out right lies and propaganda. I physically ache when I realize that they cannot see through the lies and deception. They cannot see that they are supporting a lie that will harm them, and our country.
I feel so small and insignificant. I feel my voice is lost in the madness and fury.
I'd love to meet you. I feel much the same. I've had the great luck of meeting a woman who, as a adolescent, was asked to help with taking care of children. Next thing she knew, she was smuggling Jewish children out of Germany.
More than go to another time, I'd like to bring a time into now. In 1965 I was standing by a river in Alaska with so many salmon trying to swim upstream the river looked like solid salmon. Fish were being push up on the banks because there was not enough room in the flowing water. It was a time of abundance, both in the natural world and in our sense of the future. Oh my, how things have changed.
I was taught by my grandparents, and lived all my 70+ years, believing I should always do what I know to be right and fair. Many Americans share that. A jury of Americans are deemed to be a reasonable person as a whole. I see the electorate much the same way. I understand the backlash against Hillary, thank you James Comey for the biggest blunder of your life, though I desperately wanted her to win. I knew what Trump was deep in my soul. Republicans of today will do anything to win, and I can’t imagine what is in the mind of his supporters, I just can’t think like that. With everything that I am, I hope someone of our future will want to travel back in time following this November and see the events that changed our country, and the world, for the better.
Prior to the advent of antibiotics and modern surgery…numbers of women dying from pregnancy-related issues was astronomical and birth control options were minimal. I had to have 2 c-sections. Living before the 1950’s is out of the question … one grandfather came to this country and did roam the NYC streets at the turn of the century. Tenement housing, lack of public services for clean water; child labor—It all looks romantic on TV, but you don’t actually smell or experience the dire poverty.
I’d like to go into a future where women are treated as respectable citizens whose rights and privileges are never abated, abandoned or refused and war is never the answer and peace prevails over the earth!
I would like to have had the opportunity to sail from Austria, Hungary to Ellis Island with my 8 year old grandmother, great grandmother and great aunt and to know why they left their homeland. Also, being a nurse, I would have liked to have worked with Florence Nightingale.
So since we live in The here now -what can we do to fix the Supreme court the corruption insanity invading the MAGA people who follow Trump around like little puppies. ?????
A huge fan of music ever since I sawThe Beatles on the Ed Sullivan Show when I was 8. By the time is was 13 I had seen the Jimi Hendrix Expeeience twice. At 68 I still go to shows of all kinds.
One of my favourite musicians is the literally greatest electric guitarist living today, and an equally great songwriter, Richard Thompson.
RT was a founding member of the UK band Fairport Convention. On their second album the late great folk singer Sandy Denny joined. She was first known in the US from a cover version of her famous song ''Who Know Where The Time Goes'' by folk singer Judy Collins* - It was even the title of Judy's 1968 album. Anyway...
Too few people in this day and age know that Jimi Hendrix had to go to London to be really famous. He would regualrly do gigs in small London clubs while he was ''coming up''. He would have a habit of checking out other bands after his own gigs. Fairport Conevrion would often do gigs that were late at night.
So here is the answer... Jimi stopped by Fairport gigs TWICE, one time actually playing bass, not guitar. I would want o be there, both times, being able to see the greatest electric guitarist ever (Jimi) on stage with the current greatest electric guitarist (RT), and with the greatest UK woman folksinger**ever (Sandy) all together.
Over the years I did see Jimi and have seen RT many times, and I did see Sandy with Fairport, but after RT had left the band.
It'll never happen. and there is no film nor tapes of either event, and I would NEVER want to see a fictional film about this as it would be an extreem insult to all involved.
*I will be seeing Judy live (my first time!) with Graham Nash in October!
**Martin Carthy MBE, who inspired other musicians such as Bob Dylan, Paul Simon and Richard Thompson, is THE ne plus ultra of UK folksingers. He will be 83 on Tuesday the 21st. I had the honour of meeting him with his wife Norma Waterston (sadly died in 2022) and their daughte Eliza Carthy at a show where I not only got their group albums signed, but also my orignal UK copies of Martin's first two albuns, (1965 and 1966), and his fifth (1969).
For purely selfish reasons, my wish would be to travel to Louisville Kentucky, back in late April 1932. Using what, at those times would be, my advanced knowledge I would raise by legitimate means the funds to attend the Kentucky Derby on the 7th and bet all on Burgoo King to win. (Paid $13.24).
A week thence to Baltimore Maryland and all funds again on Burgoo King to win the Preakness Stakes. Which he did, of course. (Payout unknown).
Then on to Elmont New York for the Belmont Stakes on 4th June, this time to wager on Faireno. An outsider with poor form that was pulled from running in the Preakness, leading for most the race and winning by 1 & 1/2 lengths, so the payout should have been very good indeed.
I'm not really a gambling man but I would wager that that six week sojourn through a few of the prettiest States during a delightful time of year should have amply provided the $490.00 required to purchase me one of Mr. Ford's brand new that year Model 18 three-window coupes, with the fancy V8 engine. Then I'd just have to figure out where and how to stash it for the next several decades until I am born, and then old enough to drive and, more importantly, appreciate it.
I'd have a showdown with Colette in a dusky Paris hotel, slinging back shots of whatever poison she picked, while she spun yarns about lovers and lunatics. Her eyes would dance with a devilish spark, each word she dropped like a bullet from a literary six-gun she handled with the coolness of a bandit queen.
_______
Then, hell-bent on wrecking my own peace, I'd find myself tangled up with Edwige Feuillère in the shadowy corners of a Paris back-alley joint, her eyes alive with tales of her screen exploits and a love for the dramatic that could set a heart on fire. We'd burn through the night, wrapped up in the wreckage of a romance too fiery to last.
______
Shoulder to shoulder with the tough broads from history, their voices for suffrage pounding the pavements in a defiant beat. With Alice Paul and Carrie Chapman Catt at my side, we'd charge forward, a storm of petticoats and protests, our demands cutting through the smog of political indifference, staking our claim at the decision-making table or swearing to smash it altogether.
_______
At the core of the United States vs. Windsor showdown, I'd be right there where the air crackled with the electricity of change. The courtroom buzzed like a war room, every legal volley a grenade lobbed over the entrenchments of tradition. Robbie Kaplan, ready for war, charged forth for Edith Windsor, slicing through the dense fog of DOMA with a fury that could make the heavens weep.
Kaplan wasn’t just shadowboxing; she was throwing fire into the machinery of injustice, taking on a law that dared to define love on its narrow, biased terms. When she blew apart Section 3 of DOMA, it wasn't just a victory; it was an earthquake that remodeled the bedrock of American law, sparking a cascade of events leading to Obergefell v. Hodges.
______
In a landscape scarred by conflict, stitched together with bravery and the raw thrill of adrenaline, stands the tale of my cousin, Eleanor. Schooled in the dusty airstrips of the South, she conquered the skies alongside her brothers, each takeoff a pact with destiny. Yet, it was in the grim clutches of World War II, far from her home soil, where her true mettle was forged.
As a navigator, she charted paths across hostile territories—until fate took a brutal twist as the pilot beside her fell. Unflinching, she shifted the lifeless pilot, seized control amidst the thunder of warfare, and completed their mission. Her actions that day weren't just about flying; they were a bold challenge to danger, a salute to the indomitable spirit of those who push beyond their limits. This is the legacy of a woman who, in the furnace of war, claimed her rightful spot in the cockpit and in history, embodying the fearless soul of those who command the skies.
I have seen enough episodes of Star Trek to know that when you alter history you get unforeseen consequences. As a man you can imagine effecting history...stop Lincoln's assasination...beat up Hitler.....Hang Herod! But as a woman all I could do is have strategic sex with Hitler's father or tell the suffragettes what's coming or go back to ancient Greece and tell Socrates a thing or two. Talk and sex is all I have to work with.
I just got home from a trip to Paris, where I thoroughly enjoyed the Musée d’Orsay’s “One Night in Paris, 1874.” This was a tremendous virtual reality experience that allowed me to walk through the streets of Paris in April, 1874, when 30 artists displayed 130 of their works for the first time, and Impressionism was born! I was able to “meet” the likes of Manet, Monet, Van Gogh, Cézanne, Sisley, Seurat, Gauguin, Cassatt and others and discuss their paintings with them. We even went “en pleine aire” as they captured the beauty of the French countryside on canvas. This trip back in time was unforgettable.
I think I'd like to back to the time of Jesus of Nazareth. I've always felt like he existed, but was not the literal son of God. But perhaps witnessing a few of the 'miracles' first hand would change my mind.
PS: I'd love to sneak a cell phone along too, so I could show America's Christians once and for all that he was most certainly NOT caucasian.
interesting topic as i always wonder where and when i would choose to go. I do very much appreciate the remarks of Sherry Bellamy as they show a very different side to the time travel notion. I do not know if undoing something in the past would have its intended consequences, but it would be hard not to try.
I am captivated by early American history and would love to interview many of the "founding fathers" and especially those who drafted the Constitution to find out what they really meant and if they understood where they were leaving things so ambiguous. Along the lines of Sherry's remarks, traveling back to the presidential election of 1876 that undid reconstruction and remedying that would have had a profound effect on the country.
selfishly, as a lover of classical music, it would be incredible to visit Mozart and Beethoven, two very different but brilliant composers from the same era...
and of course, going all the way back to the start of Christianity and following the dilution, changes, and misrepresentation of that message over 2000 plus years...
Two time period. Purely fashion stuff 1800s with the high waisted flowing dresses and the 1890s Edwardian. Too beautiful a day in New York to go political!!!
I would love to go back to observe the time period between the Reconstruction era and the 1920s in order to study the music that was being made by the former enslaved people of the south and track that music as it developed into the African American Artform (Black American Music) we now call Jazz. The first recording of what can be considered jazz was recorded in 1917, but what happened before that is only informed by written accounts and conjecture. To see/hear the “blues” form develop and become codified would be incredible!! What did the music Louis Armstrong sound like in the New Orleans of his youth?
As a Black woman there are no past times in American history that I would like to visit.
If I could go to the Bahamas in 1492 and get the indigenous people to destroy Columbus and his ships, that would be a good deed.
If there were a period in the past I’d like to visit it might be the reign of Cleopatra in Egypt - to serve as an advisor and steer her away from danger perhaps.
One good deed that I wish I could perform for this country would be to return to 2000 in Florida and properly design the ballots so that Bush could never be placed in office and thereby could never appoint the traitor Justice Alito.
Or maybe go to the NYTimes newsroom in 2016 and stop the ridiculous attacks on Hillary Clinton and focus instead on the despicable character of one DJT, which the Times was well aware of but ignored. Then again if I could go back to 2008 or 2012 and get President Obama to appoint a Democratic FBI director to prevent James Comey’s sabotage of Hillary’s campaign that too would serve us well.
Sigh.
I guess I’d rather fix current disasters than fantasize about past periods when the likelihood of my having a good life as a black female would be slim to none.
Understandable. May we all do what we can in these times.
I’m a white woman and I agree with you 100%. Stopping the NYT, Comey and then TFG would’ve made a huge difference in our lives today.
I agree.
Yes, can you go back to 2000 and fix those ballots? We likely wouldn’t have had 9/11, wouldn’t have gone to war with Iraq and Afghanistan—and would have confronted climate change decades ago.
2000 is a good place to start!
Great thoughts. With you!
Yes!
I’ve been thinking about Clinton’s impeachment. From this point in history I think Monica Lewinsky was not protected enough.
What if he had been convicted? Gore would have become president and stayed in office for at least a full term of his own. Our environmental issues would not have become a dire as they are.
It’s hard as a woman and a doctor not to worry about being burned at the stake.
I was going to say something similar. As a woman (unless I were an invisible spectator) there are very few inviting times for me to travel to, even temporarily. I would perhaps like to march once with and then congratulate the Suffragettes and immediately pop back to my own timeline.
I third this opinion. While I love history, history has not loved women too incredibly much. And being an "uppity woman" I would be in danger for my life from day one. *sigh*
my thoughts exactly...so right now, for me 2008 to try harder to make a difference in 2016.....
I am also in the camp of not traveling back in time. It comes down to being a woman and knowing there is so much to do now.
Interesting thoughts about going back in time but I can tell you as a woman -we don't want to go back -we don't want to go backwards we don't want slavery - constant pregnancy -my father's mother had 15 children- think about it -15 children!! No choice!
Let's learn from the past and keep working to create a better future.
Agree. My great grandmother had 18, not including her husband’s son (who she reportedly adored) from his first (tragic) marriage.
Pure exhaustion.
Yes my grandmother was married off at 17 to a man with four children from two wives who died in childbirth and she had her first child on her first wedding anniversary at 18 so I guess it's lucky for me that she had 11 live births because my dad was her 11th. And number 15 of the children she raised
Just wow.
Right? Few choices, if any. My grandmother was the 18th child, her mother died soon after (no surprise). Only 13 survived to adulthood. Infant mortality was rampant.
Queens, early 1950’s to find baby Donald Trump.
Queens NY 1940s to stop the creation of baby DJT!
😂😂😂👏👏
Well "Mike Hammer" is a suitable name for that imaginary journey, for sure. Where's Micky Spillane on this?
What a coincidence: I have the DVD in the player all ready to resume a rewatch of a film I must have seen either in an Iowa City movie theater essentially "on" the university campus as an impressionable eight-year-old kid, or at the Varsity next to the Drake campus, summer of 1960.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Time_Machine_(1960_film)
The Time Machine (also marketed as H. G. Wells' The Time Machine) is a 1960 American period post-apocalyptic science fiction film based on the 1895 novella of the same name by H. G. Wells. It was produced and directed by George Pal, and stars Rod Taylor, Yvette Mimieux, and Alan Young. The story is set in Victorian England and follows an inventor who constructs a machine that enables him to travel into the distant future. Once there, he discovers that mankind's descendants have divided into two species, the passive, childlike, and vegetarian Eloi and the underground-dwelling Morlocks, who feed on the Eloi. [More]
The film was originally released on August 17, 1960, and was distributed by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.[2] It received the Academy Award for Best Special Effects[5] for its time-lapse photographic effects, which show the world changing rapidly as the time traveler journeys into the future.
And just this morning I was thinking that after a few months on Substack nobody picked up on the Mickey Spillane connection and there you were! The 1960 Time Machine Morlocks always scared the bejesus out of me.
It's Art-a-Whirl weekend* here in "Mipples," as a friend called it just for the slight shock value, but these Twin Cities and the state routinely nourish a certain degree of general nous - more theater than anywhere outside of the coasts, things like that.
Yeah the Morlocks, excellent sci-fi fantasy apocalyptic film villains! This film has aged well.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arts_in_Minneapolis
https://nemaa.org/art-a-whirl/faq/
"Art-A-Whirl is a self-directed open studio tour throughout all of Northeast Minneapolis, with over 1,300 artists participating at 100 sites over the course of three days. In addition to interacting directly with artists and their work, visitors can experience art demos, activities, performances, and music. Northeast Minneapolis is also home to dozens of restaurants and breweries.
When is Art-A-Whirl?
May 17—19, 2024.
Where is Art-A-Whirl?
All over! Art-A-Whirl happens at artist studio buildings, galleries, businesses, and even homes during the weekend. You can use NEMAA’s Art-A-Whirl Map to navigate the event, our online Directory to find artists you want to visit, and our Activities page to find info about demos, performances, and more." [More} It's practically unique, more large urban areas should maybe borrow the idea!
An example of the artists there, a woman I met when we were both students all these years ago at Macalester, as influential on my approach to life as anyone I have ever known:
https://nemaa.org/artists/candy-kuehn-candy-kuehn-studio/
https://nemaa.org/artists/candy-kuehn-candy-kuehn-studio/
I’ve seen that film three or four times. Always fascinates.
I’ve seen “The Time Machine” at least 6 times, and
enjoyed seeing it every time.
That movie scared the heck out of me when I was probably 7, although, I had the Classics Comics version so I knew what was coming.
The Varsity!
We saw a bunch of excellent films there, that is, a crowd of neighborhood kids or just myself. The Wrong Box* is one, jeez I learned a new word, "Tontine," it helped prep Des Moines for Iowa Public Broadcasting showing Monty Python's Flying Circus; also The World of Henry Orient**, that was a revelation to me vis-a-vis female fans, their wiles and hyper-romantic adulation of, in this case, a classical music performing artist. It was good (is good) to have a movie theater playing a mix of Hollywood / mainstream and foreign films. No wonder there was a battle to keep it from going under. Look at the cast in TWB, whoa!
* www.imdb.com/title/tt0061204/
www.imdb.com/title/tt0061204/fullcredits?ref_=tt_ov_st_sm
**en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_World_of_Henry_Orient
The World of Henry Orient is a 1964 American comedy-drama film directed by George Roy Hill and starring Peter Sellers, Paula Prentiss, Angela Lansbury, Tippy Walker, Merrie Spaeth, Phyllis Thaxter, Bibi Osterwald, and Tom Bosley. It is based on the novel of the same name [Wikidata] by Nora Johnson, who co-wrote the screenplay with her father, Nunnally Johnson.
The original story was inspired in part by Nora Johnson's own experiences as a schoolgirl, as well as by a real-life incident involving singer Tony Bennett and two teenage fans.[citation needed]
I wonder if the ending was meant to mean "Mankind just won't learn from History!" or "Here goes again" or maybe, tastelessly, what it seemed to suggest which was that the only directives and narratives Mankind needs is in the Christian Bible.
Not from HG Wells - anyway the conclusion would be the hero returning to lead the oppressed Eloi to conquer the Morlocks, where's that in the Xtian Bible (I mean is it in some Gnostic gospel I missed out on?) It's almost more like revolutionary independence movements! George would be the Eloi's Bolivar or our 1776 revolutionaries, my own direct ancestors were in on that [Major Eleazer Curtis II, and were also Christians, but I think the Christian background was overwhelmed by motivations like what's summed up in Paine's Common Sense*!}
If you're talking about consistent "mitigated pacifism," maybe. And evolving beyond warfare, but that's evolution, science, rational ethics and morality. No particular need for any particular brand of religion.
I think most of our progress over centuries has required rational humanists defanging religion, ending most religious wars. The fanatics running Gaza have an entire religious brand of Islam, not any kind of mystical Sufism, but the most fanatical interpretation. Sri Lanka had to deal with the Hindu-Buddhist religious war for decades, no religion or region seems immune.
Maybe Taoism is a counter-example of sorts, but then the first question is, is Taoism a religion or a philosophy? It seems so syncretic and mystical yet explicitly rejects doctrinal dogmatism - we do get that in Christian mysticism, or Jewish teachers like Martin Buber, but that's not the mainstream.
*https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Sense
Common Sense[1] is a 47-page pamphlet written by Thomas Paine in 1775–1776 advocating independence from Great Britain to people in the Thirteen Colonies. Writing in clear and persuasive prose, Paine collected various moral and political arguments to encourage common people in the Colonies to fight for egalitarian government. It was published anonymously on January 10, 1776,[2] at the beginning of the American Revolution and became an immediate sensation.
It was sold and distributed widely and read aloud at taverns and meeting places. In proportion to the population of the colonies at that time (2.5 million), it had the largest sale and circulation of any book published in American history.[3] As of 2006, it remains the all-time best-selling American title and is still in print today.[4]
***** OK, so I'm a frustrated would-be professor, so sue me!
Excuse me, I was referring to the original movie and the conclusive scene where the protagonist goes back to the past and before he returns to the future he goes through his book shelf and grabs a Bible before hopping into the machine. The camera zooms in on the Bible in his hand, thus an important statement. I was questioning what the statement was. That's going on my memory of the last scenes of the 1960s movie.
This bothered me at the time, I don't remember why, but it stayed with me all my life. Later in life it brought to mind Christian indoctrination, though in the 1960s I wasn't even mildly concerned about indoctrination and was still trying to figure things out. I was 14 yrs old, more or less. I was raised in a devout Catholic household and still going to church with my nine siblings.
So, if you don't mind, I was just crudely putting my inexact thoughts out there. I'm not a theologian or have any 'credentials', just an opinion. Theories are what people with PhD's and the like have, opinions are what I have.
Oh now I get it, I just looked at the stuff you've been re-posting, it all makes sense - if you have opinions, EllenMHa, what good are facts, right? So you can swallow the genocide smear against Israel [Hamas is based on their genocidal goals], the apartheid smear, all of it, no wonder the facts about how that film ends are subject to propagandistic reinvention ad libitum.
Some of the stuff you have restacked is raving level nonsense on stilts, ok, First Amendment and all that.
https://www.ajc.org/news/5-reasons-why-the-events-in-gaza-are-not-genocide
******
1. “Genocide” refers to the physical destruction of an entire group in whole or in part that has been targeted on the basis of its identity. This is not Israel’s objective in Gaza.
Raphael Lemkin, a Polish lawyer of Jewish descent, introduced the term genocide in 1944 to refer to events including the Nazis’ systematic extermination of Jews.
Lemkin explained the need for a new legal term to describe this horror, saying: “there has been no serious endeavor hitherto to prevent and punish the murder and destruction of millions.... there was not even an adequate name for such a phenomenon.”
What You Need to Know About the Latest International Court of Justice Action in the Case Against Israel
The United Nations General Assembly recognized genocide as a crime under international law in 1946 and it was codified in the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide in 1948.
The Convention defines genocide as the commission of grave harm against members of a national, ethnic, racial or religious group - such as by killing, causing serious physical or mental harm, inflicting conditions that bring about physical destruction, imposing measures to prevent births or forcibly taking away children - with the intent to destroy the group as such.
Genocide means targeting members of a group because of their group identity and not something they are individually thought to have done.
Israel’s war is against Hamas: Israel is not seeking to destroy the Palestinian people or the Palestinian population of Gaza, which is what would need to happen in order to correctly apply the term “genocide.” Israel’s leaders have repeatedly asserted that their campaign in Gaza is solely against the terrorist organization Hamas. In fact, this type of military campaign is the exact opposite of reflecting an attempt to eliminate the Palestinian population.
****** [More] Ellen, I will only take you seriously from now on if you can put up some kind of cogent, lucid, relevant rebuttals in your own words to these five points. Otherwise you're just repeating Hamas talking points, in effect. Not only that, I would LOVE to see those hypothetical rebuttal arguments - I am open to rational persuasion.
You are OVER THE TOP in your replies here. I know you're a very very passionate person, but your passion is misplaced. I never thought it posted anything like that. You need to go to a lecture and argue with a professor or something like that.
Your comments are totally off the mark and I tried to let you know that my comment was JUST a quip. Calm down.
The camera never "zooms in on the Bible in his hand," either! He doesn't "go through his bookshelf," he hauls the machine to ready it and zooms off. I just checked to see if I was distracted somehow, but not so: that scene doesn't exist.
In fact the mystery is which three books he did take along, I would suggest any version of any religious text would be de trop, so maybe Shakespeare, Darwin and Marx - that would fit in with HG Wells much better. No Christian allegories amongst his dozens of books!
And what good would it do to try to drag ancient mythology into the realms of the Eloi?
Even the so-called "Golden Rule" is useless, as satirized by George Bernard Shaw:: "Do not do unto others as you would have them do unto you - their tastes may not be the same"!
It's even worse than that: sadists and serial killers could apply the Golden Rule's raw template consistently, so the term "tastes" is very anodyne.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pfheSAcCsrE
Misquoting Jesus in the Bible - Professor Bart D. Ehrman
Bart D. Ehrman 164K subscribers
2,249,559 views Nov 3, 2013
Heyns Lecture Series at Cubberley Auditorium, Stanford University Campus, Wednesday, April 25, 2007. Lecture on "Misquoting Jesus" a textual criticism of Biblical manuscript tampering. From the book "Misquoting Jesus: Scribes Who Altered Scripture and Readers Who May Never Know."
Book listed on Bart Ehrman's Foundation Blog: http://ehrmanblog.org/misquoting-jesus/
Book listed on Bart Ehrman's Main website: https://www.bartehrman.com/misquoting...
Bart D. Ehrman is the James A. Gray Distinguished Professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He came to UNC in 1988, after four years of teaching at Rutgers University. At UNC he has served as both the Director of Graduate Studies and the Chair of the Department of Religious Studies. A graduate of Wheaton College (Illinois), Professor Ehrman received both his Masters of Divinity and Ph.D. from Princeton Theological Seminary, where his 1985 doctoral dissertation was awarded magna cum laude.
By the way, I commented that I was referring to what I "remembered" from watching the movie 50 more or less years ago. Maybe my "perception" of that scene zoomed in on the bible. All I remember is not liking it at 14 years old at a time I wasn't overtly questioning religion's validity or role in people's lives. But there we have another contentious issue which is did I really think that about religion at the time or did I think it later but insert it into that scene from my memory.
I'm sure you know about the unreliability or malleability of memories. Such as there are people that swear they remember being born or being in a crib and being able to describe the room in detail or whatever. The debate being did the subject really remember that from that age or insert these memories or from their adult memory.
So he had a copy of one version of the Bible, that's what I was pointing out, he's a hero on a quest throughout the movie, and maybe preparing to cite the OT, who knows? But HG Wells was far beyond those superstitions, so possibly the other two volumes were Darwin and another science text, the hero is a scientist, an inventor.
Opinions ARE theories, though - you have your theories and I have mine. Chacun a son gout!
The scientific hero is not about to impose fascistic theocracy, right? Based on the preposterous theoretical claim that "the only theories and directives Mankind [???} needs is in the Christian Bible!"
Again: WHICH "Bible"? There's not even agreement within the texts, biblical hermeneutics won't abolish the contradictions. So that's already tendentious. Allow me to completely reject your theory about the film's ending [although he may have grabbed a copy of the Bible thinking the Eloi were too beaten down to immediately evolve their own rational code of ethics], George wasn't about to destroy their spirit with dogmatic bilge!
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H._G._Wells *****
Wells was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature four times.[10]
Wells's earliest specialised training was in biology, and his thinking on ethical matters took place in a Darwinian context.[11] He was also an outspoken socialist from a young age, often (but not always, as at the beginning of the First World War) sympathising with pacifist views.[12][13] In his later years, he wrote less fiction and more works expounding his political and social views, sometimes giving his profession as that of journalist.[9]
H.G. Wells is an author I well respect. It's possible that the scene I remember from the 'movie' wasn't even in the book. I don't know.
A lot of movies or TV shows push God or Spirituality. That's one of the reasons I stopped watching. Every damn thing I enjoy turns into a God musing or whatever at some point. It's annoying.
When I said "people with PhDs or the like have a theory and people like me just have opinions" I was poking fun at some people's view of whose opinions matter and referring to the Scientific method at the same. I thought it was clever (I laughed anyway, seems if I don't laugh at own my jokes who will? ;-) )
By the way, I was just positing that that scene could have been "Hey, religion and it's craziness will be Good for the future of the humanity." or "Ha Ha. Religion may have been what destroyed the world let's do it again."
You are over qualified, I think, for a debate with me. I would have to go read a bunch of books or go to college to debate you. You win.
Haha!
I'd go back to the 1787 for the Constitutional Convention and get myself on the “Grand Committee on Postponed Questions” and do everything I could to eliminate the proposed Electoral College.
I would be happy to sit in and listen to the Constitutional Convention. What was the country that the "Founding Fathers" really envisioned? What did they intend? As a woman, I couldn't expect to have any say, but maybe I could explain the intent later.
Nice question.
First, I would be with Ulysses S Grant at Appomattox. I would illustrate to him the devastating and horrific consequences of NOT hanging Lee and Davis. And ready to hang Nathan Bedford KKK Forrest, et all.
Secondly, I would need a significant albeit even temporary brain upgrade from my SB Physics. Then I would attend the 1927 Solvay conference with Einstein, Bohr, Plank, Heisenberg, de Broglie, Curie.
I think I would follow DougAZ
ouuu. I like this Doug !!!
Kind thanks flo
You could get in on the beginnings of the contentious "Spooky action at a distance" debates and more, nice!
I know it’s been said often but if I could’ve traveled back in time, I would’ve killed Hitler in 1933
As a daughter of Holocaust survivors, I lost over 90% of my family
On the other hand, I would be speaking Polish and probably still living in Lodz 😀
But when you look at the carnage from World War II, I do not think Japan would have bombed. Pearl Harbor had Hitler and Germany been stopped before 1939.
I would like to travel back to Dallas on November 21, 1963 and try to prevent Oswald from completing his date with destiny the following day. Likewise, I would travel to Los Angeles on June 4, 1968 to prevent Sirhan from doing the same thing early the next morning. The assassinations of JFK and RFK changed the course of history for this country and the world. If only they had both lived.
Steve I am re-reading the extraordinary book of James W. Douglas, JFK and the Unspeakable, if you havent read it, you should, despite being heartbreaking it is also inspiring on all the things John Kennedy wanted to achieve. And you are right, it changed history. Read the book, you will not regret it..
Name it please
She did. It’s called “JFK and the Unspeakable”
Hard to get a kindle copy to read
11/22/63 by Steven King has a great attempt at just that.
Yes, I read the book and watched the mini-series. Both excellent.
Semi-related, I would like to go back a little further to stop the media of that day from comparing Jack and Jackie to the film ''Camelot'', literally inevting the concept of the ''imperial presidency" which years later Richard Nixon used - ''if the president does in, it's not a crime", and others since then, like Regan and President Cheney, and of course Trump.
Note also the unwavering Kennedy effect, which has now come back to haunt us wirh RFK Jr.
Oswald didn't shoot anyone at all in Dallas that day...
Start here, and note it is part one of six.
https://www.kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-articles/part-1-of-6-no-motive-plus-the-silenced-witnesses
Sirhan didn't fire the kill shot, start here:
https://www.kennedysandking.com/news-items/lisa-pease-on-rfk-assassination-part-1
*******
LA County Medical Examiner Thomas Noguchi carried out an excruciatingly careful autopsy and did extensive testing - the shot that killed RFK was fired at point blank range, several dozen witnesses placed Sirhan at no closer than 3-5 feet, not 3-5 inches.
Last minute Ace Security guard Thane Eugene Cesar's weapon was never even exaxmined.
https://aadl.org/node/200562
https://gordonbelray.com/rfk/index.html
^^^^ Warning: This latter site has explicit photos of the post-assassination scene in the Ambassador's pantry.
*****
So I fervently agree on the overall idea, you just have the wrong suspects!
I would go much further back in time. I have always been fascinated by Ancient Egypt, since I was a child. I’d love to return to the height of the New Kingdom, perhaps the reign of Tutankhamen’s father, and see what it was truly like. See what historians and archeologists have correctly deduced and what they’ve gotten wrong.
My dream trip to the past would be to stand on the banks of the Mighty Columbia and see her majesty before so many dams slowed her flow. Near where the Deschutes River drains, I’d watch the indigenous people stand at Celilo Falls catching salmon, then in huge abundance. Today the Columbia no longer is mighty, the once beautiful Celilo Falls lost underwater from installation of another dam. Since time travel is only a dream, I’ll take satisfaction in having seen both the headwaters and mouth of her, as well as many places along her path.
Its starting to look like she will again be mighty. The native tribes and the BLM have a tentative agreement to remove some of the dams, beginning ( I think) with ICE Harbor. Our Native Peoples are fighting for the Salmon.
I have always told my students I would like to see the look on Napoleon’s face when he makes it t all the way to Moscow and the city is burned down.
Good one.
I had an English teacher in high school who used to act out bits of history sometimes from literature sometimes straight from history books. I still remember him jumping on a desk one day to act out the storming of the Bastille- Robert Dober- the best!
Tolstoy leaves that precise description of Bonaparte's visage to his readers in War and Peace, but something of the shock you allude to here is palpable.
I would love to meet Samuel Langhorne Clemens (Mark Twain) and Senator Robert F. Kennedy. Both are heroes of mine. I'm a writer and Mark Twain's writing inspired me. I'm a progressive DEM political activist, and RFK inspired me. They inspire me still.
I agree with Trish, also being a woman and a doctor. I can't think of a time in history for me to visit enjoyably and safely. (Atho I would like to go back to meet and talk with my parents before I was born.)
I don’t think there’s a particular point in time in history that I’d like to see…but I would like to revisit times in my own life. Specifically, I’d like to go back to my first trip to Paris to study Esthétique at L’Ecole Jean D’Estrees, which no longer exists. What a fabulous time and experience that was, walking the streets of Paris in the middle of the fashion boom, just soaking up all that creativity. I’d also like to go back to my Le Petit Brouard, a property that my father-in-law owned with two spring-fed lakes and my first ever experience of a real vegetable garden that he tended so lovingly. I miss weekends at the vineyards with the old French people, sitting in a cool cave in the evening, drinking new wine, telling amazing and harrowing stories of WWII and singing songs…the acoustics were incredible! I could go on and on…but I’d like to go back to the French countryside in the Loire Valley again.
Why not? I have been in Paris for two years. Loire valley is not far by train there are lots of retirees from the US calling france home now (as I do).
If I could go back in time, it would be to peek briefly seek out my grandpa on the WWI battlefields of northern France . He hailed from Eastport ME and abandoned college to become an AFS ambulance driver volunteer in the war. When he returned home he was seriously depressed for several years, maybe with PTSD who knows. He almost broke off his relationship with my grandma because of his inability to find work.
We have photos of him in France from that period. He had hoped to stay on, but he couldn’t get employed. He had wanted to promote US French relations. I would go back to tell him I am now living his dream … and I think he would be proud!
I can say I’m a bit jealous! So happy for you! My husband is from France so we still have family there, and plan to visit next year! It’s really my second home…and has been for many years.
There’s an ice-breaker question that is a version of this. Who from history would you want to have dinner with? My answer to both questions are variations on a theme. The person to have dinner with would be one of my ancestors from the 1300-1400’s. That is also the time period I would like to be able to visit - to see what life was really like for “the common folk” - those about whom little is written.
Reminds me of a line by Steven Wright: The sign said “Breakfast Anytime” so I ordered French Toast, during the Renaissance.
I had a list of three people I would have liked to meet - Agatha Christie, Bill Russell, and Walter Cronkite. Didn't meet them, but the list shows my varied interests. Sadly, I would go back to my childhood in the forties and fifties. It was idyllic, without the worries of my parents. It makes me, as a woman, less than courageous.
Paris when Gertrude Stein held her literary salons.
1920s when my mother’s 16 year old brother twisted his ankle playing baseball to stop the doctor from stupidly puncturing the swelling with a unsanitized needle, leaving him to die of sepsis.
1300s to meet the purported Genoese soldier who started my fathers direct line of descendants.
But yes, as others have said, as a woman there are few times in history where I wouldn’t have to have feared for my life or my children’s lives.
lol, All right since many of you are ready to take on DJT as a child, I shall look at other options !
I would love to live in France in the 18th century since I love the arts and architecture of that time, but since I love taking showers I think the lack of running water is an obstacle.... lol
Being originally French and a painter, I would like to return to the 20s and 30s in France when Picasso and Braque and Magritte in Belgium lived, I am obsessed with what Picasso did in 1923 when he lived with Olga the Russian dancer. To me this is the peak of Picasso, this is really the most beautiful things he did. So I would love to meet all these people. I think also I want to meet Hemingway and Scott F when they lived in France... lol. I would love to live in the movie "Midnight in Paris " !!!!
Imagine listening to Hemingway and Scott F. !! lol
Yes! Midnight in Paris is fascinating, and the music is sublime.
ohh you are so right on the music 💕🌿..... Just sublime.
The scenes where Yves Heck plays Cole Porter.. and the evening where Owen Wilson watches Sonia Rolland plays Josephine Baker dancing at the night club... luscious !!
Hemingway was a vile misogynist and nearly all of his books were about violence and killing.
Worst alleged great author ever.
Romantic. *swoon*
Monterey Folk Festival
1963 and I'm sitting next to Mama Cass hearing Janis for the first time.
Monterey Pop for sure! I want to sit by Mickey Dolenz as we both hear Ravi Shankar. Mickey was SO joyous. https://curxio.tumblr.com/post/127774121557/micky-dolenz-applauding-ravi-shankars-performance
I would like to be in Paris when it was liberated & our soldiers cheered. Likewise on the NY dock when "the boys" came home, then, Times Square to see the famous kiss. 😘
My mom was there - in Times Square celebrating. My dad wouldn’t get home till later. Just knowing his ship wasn’t the target of submarines allowed her to breathe she said.
If forced to pick one time, 5000 bce. I'd like to wander past the folks putting up Stonehenge, and causally ask "What's this all about?". I'd probably have hundreds of more questions, but that would do for a start.
👌🏼
I was fascinated by Helen Keller as a girl. I read a biography of her, and as part of a Girl Scout badge, fashioned a new cover for the book out of felt and cardboard. I had it for years. To this day, if I could spend time with an historical person, Helen would be top of my list with Eleanor Roosevelt second.
Fellow Scout here!
My wedding day - 50 years ago - to see my long since deceased parents just once more. The thoughts I could share.
I’ve always been fascinated with 1900 through WWII in Paris, Vienna, and Berlin. Bakewell’s The Existentialist Cafe and Illies 1913 and Love in Time of Hate capture much of the allure those years hold for me. Finally I would have wished to have been a student of Jacques Ellul. Thanks for asking.
I've been so lucky to have lived the past 44 years with my wife that I can't think of any better time in history than the day we met. If I could, I would go back to that day and do it all over again. Our history isn't over either! I hope we can keep making our history for many years to come.
I imagine many of my generation would travel back to try and save Jack and Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King.
Though I'm totally in love with Italy and much of Europe I think if I could time travel I would go back to China or Japan I would love to attend a few banquets in China and wander around the woods in Japan on a spring evening. Everything in bloom. Peaceful. Makes me yearn for a time when we will have peace again in the USA!
Maybe Memphis, Tennessee on April 4, 1968 early in the morning before the tragic event could take place, so I could point out where the escaped convict James Earl Ray (who had been on the run) will be staying and ultimately taking the fall for another intricate black ops inside job, post November 22, '63. I'd love to piss off that psychotic J Edgar Hoover, and actually Allen Dulles as well.
Maybe that way, the rot that we have accumulated since that time wouldn't be as bad as it is now, and a great and courageous leader could've lived to see his grandchildren.
I was visiting my aunt in Memphis, she was to take me to the greyhound bus station. We were heading to the car, when my uncle came running out of the house. He said to get back in the house. He had just heard on the radio that someone had tried to assassinate Dr. Martin Luther King. Soon after we heard he had died. I was in fourth grade, playing outside during recess when our president was cruelly murdered. I was the only Catholic child in a small rural school in Mississippi. I felt isolated and alone. My father had died three and half years before, I took the death of President Kennedy personally. As a child, I identified with both the children of the president and Dr. King, their deaths and the death of Robert Kennedy, brought back the pain and anguish of my father’s death. He committed suicide at Fort Bragg. At that time the Army didn’t recognize PTSD. I would give anything to be able to have stopped the timeline that led to the deaths of all four men.
I was living in Mississippi, too.
Goodness Sharon, there were hard times...
I would have loved to work in labs or on college campuses with other women. That was fun during my time and must have been thrilling in past times. Fascinating discoveries!
In response to your question, I too have been asking myself where and when would I have liked to have lived? Also, one other question, how would I have reacted to the happenings of those times? Would I have been brave enough to step forward and speak up?
There are two time periods that fascinate me and make my imagination run wild. The first is Spain between 750 to 950, a period of scholarship and poetry and amazing architecture. Though not totally a time of religious tolerance, it was a period when cross cultural conversations were held.
It was also a time when women mathematicians, scientists, writers, and inventors had some opportunities to bloom. I would love to be able to sit with Labana of Cordoba in the 10th century, share tea listen to her talk about her ideas.
Contrasting Spain of the 10th century with Hilda’s of Whitby England, I would have loved to have been able to walk along the shore with Abbess Hilda, and listened as she talked to the men that sought her advice. Abbess Hilda fascinates me, because a woman in the Christian church at that time came up against a church and polity that didn’t necessarily value women; even defining women as the source of evil.
I would also liked to be there when Æthelflæd became Queen and ruler of Mercia, she led her people against Viking raids and was critical to the unification of England in the late 9th century. She was the only English woman, unchallenged as a ruler, until the 16th century.
To have first hand knowledge and be able to compare and contrast the lives of women during the medieval period, women who came from different parts of the world and different cultures, makes my mind spin.
The second time and place I would like visit, is broad, the Edwardian period and the periods between and during WWI and WWII.
As a woman and as a lover of literature and art, to be in Paris between the wars, to have conversations with poets, novelists, philosophers, and political theorists of that time, makes my heart pound.
To call out Hemingway on his misogyny. To wander from cafe to cafe, meeting writers, musicians, and painters I admire. To watch as the visual arts evolved from impressionist to cubist. To observe the beginning of the modernist period in dance, theatre, and poetry. To be there as workers strive for fair wages and safer working conditions.
I thrill at the thought of listening to Virginia Woolf read aloud from Three Guineas. Hearing her call out Britain’s leaders, pointing out White Male Leaders’ hypocrisy. Asking them how they can they call out the oppression and fascism abroad when it lives in the very heart of England, and in the U.S.
The shadows of the prejudice and narrow mindedness of the first half of the 1900s looms over us today.
I fear - the loss freedom to make decisions about our bodies, the loss of the gifts that a diversity of thought, beliefs, and perspectives bring to our nation. The gains of the last fifty years seem to be sliding away.
I wonder if I would have been brave enough in the 1920s and 1930s to stand up to prejudice and fascism? Would I have been willing to stand with the oppressed? Would I have taken to the streets with my sister suffragettes? Would I have fought for a woman’s right to vote, own property in her own right, and to make decisions about her body? Would I have hidden those hunted down by Nazi Germany, as they invaded my country?
I would like to think I would be a resistance fighter; that I would have provided a refuge for those who were being hunted down and killed; and I would like to see my self as someone who stood up and spoke out against prejudice and oppression in all its forms, no matter the consequence.
As I read and listen to the hateful vitriol being spewed from a multitude sources today, I believe I do stand up and speak up.
Even so, for me the more important question is how do I make a bigger difference? How do I bring together people who care about what is happening in our country? How do we take action against the growing threat to democracy? How do I provide a safe space for people to share their thoughts and experiences?
I don’t want to wait until it is too late.
My mother always said, we must own our complete history, the beautiful and the ugly, the glorious and the shameful. We must learn our complete history, and accept how that history has benefited some and relegated many to a place in society where it is impossible to thrive.
I believe in the tenets written down in our nations most treasured documents, but at the same time I realize that not everyone has benefited. Overtime, we as a nation have striven to improve and extend the rights and privileges that once were only given to a select group.
I hate the fact that there is a movement a foot to retrench into an idyllic and mythical past, a past that never existed, a fantasy of our nation’s history.
It breaks my heart that many of our fellow citizens are swallowing out right lies and propaganda. I physically ache when I realize that they cannot see through the lies and deception. They cannot see that they are supporting a lie that will harm them, and our country.
I feel so small and insignificant. I feel my voice is lost in the madness and fury.
I'd love to meet you. I feel much the same. I've had the great luck of meeting a woman who, as a adolescent, was asked to help with taking care of children. Next thing she knew, she was smuggling Jewish children out of Germany.
Beautifully written!
More than go to another time, I'd like to bring a time into now. In 1965 I was standing by a river in Alaska with so many salmon trying to swim upstream the river looked like solid salmon. Fish were being push up on the banks because there was not enough room in the flowing water. It was a time of abundance, both in the natural world and in our sense of the future. Oh my, how things have changed.
I was taught by my grandparents, and lived all my 70+ years, believing I should always do what I know to be right and fair. Many Americans share that. A jury of Americans are deemed to be a reasonable person as a whole. I see the electorate much the same way. I understand the backlash against Hillary, thank you James Comey for the biggest blunder of your life, though I desperately wanted her to win. I knew what Trump was deep in my soul. Republicans of today will do anything to win, and I can’t imagine what is in the mind of his supporters, I just can’t think like that. With everything that I am, I hope someone of our future will want to travel back in time following this November and see the events that changed our country, and the world, for the better.
Another thought -I would have loved to know Mozart!
Yes, but I so loved Tom Hulce I’m afraid I’d be disappointed 😆
Prior to the advent of antibiotics and modern surgery…numbers of women dying from pregnancy-related issues was astronomical and birth control options were minimal. I had to have 2 c-sections. Living before the 1950’s is out of the question … one grandfather came to this country and did roam the NYC streets at the turn of the century. Tenement housing, lack of public services for clean water; child labor—It all looks romantic on TV, but you don’t actually smell or experience the dire poverty.
There's not much advantage for women of living in the "good old days"!!!
There really aren’t many “good old days” for women, whatever our ethnicity.
Vienna, Dec22, 1806 Beethoven concert. Can you imagine? Premier of symphonies 5 and 6, piano concerto #4, and Choral Fantasy.
1808! (Sorry) Beethoven himself conducted and was pianist.
Get there in 1806 to get acclimated to early 19th century Vienna, so you’re well prepared for the 1808 concert!
Bring a blanket and some hand warmers!
I’d like to go into a future where women are treated as respectable citizens whose rights and privileges are never abated, abandoned or refused and war is never the answer and peace prevails over the earth!
I would like to have had the opportunity to sail from Austria, Hungary to Ellis Island with my 8 year old grandmother, great grandmother and great aunt and to know why they left their homeland. Also, being a nurse, I would have liked to have worked with Florence Nightingale.
I'd like to ride in a stagecoach with Samuel Clemens across the prairie and see Virginia City, Nevada and Lake Tahoe like he did in Roughing It.
I'd do Woodstock. And also Joni Mitchell and Ld Zeppelin concerts.
Yes please.
So since we live in The here now -what can we do to fix the Supreme court the corruption insanity invading the MAGA people who follow Trump around like little puppies. ?????
A huge fan of music ever since I sawThe Beatles on the Ed Sullivan Show when I was 8. By the time is was 13 I had seen the Jimi Hendrix Expeeience twice. At 68 I still go to shows of all kinds.
One of my favourite musicians is the literally greatest electric guitarist living today, and an equally great songwriter, Richard Thompson.
RT was a founding member of the UK band Fairport Convention. On their second album the late great folk singer Sandy Denny joined. She was first known in the US from a cover version of her famous song ''Who Know Where The Time Goes'' by folk singer Judy Collins* - It was even the title of Judy's 1968 album. Anyway...
Too few people in this day and age know that Jimi Hendrix had to go to London to be really famous. He would regualrly do gigs in small London clubs while he was ''coming up''. He would have a habit of checking out other bands after his own gigs. Fairport Conevrion would often do gigs that were late at night.
So here is the answer... Jimi stopped by Fairport gigs TWICE, one time actually playing bass, not guitar. I would want o be there, both times, being able to see the greatest electric guitarist ever (Jimi) on stage with the current greatest electric guitarist (RT), and with the greatest UK woman folksinger**ever (Sandy) all together.
Over the years I did see Jimi and have seen RT many times, and I did see Sandy with Fairport, but after RT had left the band.
It'll never happen. and there is no film nor tapes of either event, and I would NEVER want to see a fictional film about this as it would be an extreem insult to all involved.
*I will be seeing Judy live (my first time!) with Graham Nash in October!
**Martin Carthy MBE, who inspired other musicians such as Bob Dylan, Paul Simon and Richard Thompson, is THE ne plus ultra of UK folksingers. He will be 83 on Tuesday the 21st. I had the honour of meeting him with his wife Norma Waterston (sadly died in 2022) and their daughte Eliza Carthy at a show where I not only got their group albums signed, but also my orignal UK copies of Martin's first two albuns, (1965 and 1966), and his fifth (1969).
For purely selfish reasons, my wish would be to travel to Louisville Kentucky, back in late April 1932. Using what, at those times would be, my advanced knowledge I would raise by legitimate means the funds to attend the Kentucky Derby on the 7th and bet all on Burgoo King to win. (Paid $13.24).
A week thence to Baltimore Maryland and all funds again on Burgoo King to win the Preakness Stakes. Which he did, of course. (Payout unknown).
Then on to Elmont New York for the Belmont Stakes on 4th June, this time to wager on Faireno. An outsider with poor form that was pulled from running in the Preakness, leading for most the race and winning by 1 & 1/2 lengths, so the payout should have been very good indeed.
I'm not really a gambling man but I would wager that that six week sojourn through a few of the prettiest States during a delightful time of year should have amply provided the $490.00 required to purchase me one of Mr. Ford's brand new that year Model 18 three-window coupes, with the fancy V8 engine. Then I'd just have to figure out where and how to stash it for the next several decades until I am born, and then old enough to drive and, more importantly, appreciate it.
I'd have a showdown with Colette in a dusky Paris hotel, slinging back shots of whatever poison she picked, while she spun yarns about lovers and lunatics. Her eyes would dance with a devilish spark, each word she dropped like a bullet from a literary six-gun she handled with the coolness of a bandit queen.
_______
Then, hell-bent on wrecking my own peace, I'd find myself tangled up with Edwige Feuillère in the shadowy corners of a Paris back-alley joint, her eyes alive with tales of her screen exploits and a love for the dramatic that could set a heart on fire. We'd burn through the night, wrapped up in the wreckage of a romance too fiery to last.
______
Shoulder to shoulder with the tough broads from history, their voices for suffrage pounding the pavements in a defiant beat. With Alice Paul and Carrie Chapman Catt at my side, we'd charge forward, a storm of petticoats and protests, our demands cutting through the smog of political indifference, staking our claim at the decision-making table or swearing to smash it altogether.
_______
At the core of the United States vs. Windsor showdown, I'd be right there where the air crackled with the electricity of change. The courtroom buzzed like a war room, every legal volley a grenade lobbed over the entrenchments of tradition. Robbie Kaplan, ready for war, charged forth for Edith Windsor, slicing through the dense fog of DOMA with a fury that could make the heavens weep.
Kaplan wasn’t just shadowboxing; she was throwing fire into the machinery of injustice, taking on a law that dared to define love on its narrow, biased terms. When she blew apart Section 3 of DOMA, it wasn't just a victory; it was an earthquake that remodeled the bedrock of American law, sparking a cascade of events leading to Obergefell v. Hodges.
______
In a landscape scarred by conflict, stitched together with bravery and the raw thrill of adrenaline, stands the tale of my cousin, Eleanor. Schooled in the dusty airstrips of the South, she conquered the skies alongside her brothers, each takeoff a pact with destiny. Yet, it was in the grim clutches of World War II, far from her home soil, where her true mettle was forged.
As a navigator, she charted paths across hostile territories—until fate took a brutal twist as the pilot beside her fell. Unflinching, she shifted the lifeless pilot, seized control amidst the thunder of warfare, and completed their mission. Her actions that day weren't just about flying; they were a bold challenge to danger, a salute to the indomitable spirit of those who push beyond their limits. This is the legacy of a woman who, in the furnace of war, claimed her rightful spot in the cockpit and in history, embodying the fearless soul of those who command the skies.
goodness Gloria, all this is insanely beautiful
Thank you. Great question from Steven.
I have seen enough episodes of Star Trek to know that when you alter history you get unforeseen consequences. As a man you can imagine effecting history...stop Lincoln's assasination...beat up Hitler.....Hang Herod! But as a woman all I could do is have strategic sex with Hitler's father or tell the suffragettes what's coming or go back to ancient Greece and tell Socrates a thing or two. Talk and sex is all I have to work with.
I just got home from a trip to Paris, where I thoroughly enjoyed the Musée d’Orsay’s “One Night in Paris, 1874.” This was a tremendous virtual reality experience that allowed me to walk through the streets of Paris in April, 1874, when 30 artists displayed 130 of their works for the first time, and Impressionism was born! I was able to “meet” the likes of Manet, Monet, Van Gogh, Cézanne, Sisley, Seurat, Gauguin, Cassatt and others and discuss their paintings with them. We even went “en pleine aire” as they captured the beauty of the French countryside on canvas. This trip back in time was unforgettable.
I would like to be just before the Big Bang, what was going on then?
The American Great Plains after the introduction of the horse, but before Anglos showed up in numbers.
I think I'd like to back to the time of Jesus of Nazareth. I've always felt like he existed, but was not the literal son of God. But perhaps witnessing a few of the 'miracles' first hand would change my mind.
PS: I'd love to sneak a cell phone along too, so I could show America's Christians once and for all that he was most certainly NOT caucasian.
lol. Robert you are so right.
And I have a feeling that he really went to India during the so called intermediate years.
interesting topic as i always wonder where and when i would choose to go. I do very much appreciate the remarks of Sherry Bellamy as they show a very different side to the time travel notion. I do not know if undoing something in the past would have its intended consequences, but it would be hard not to try.
I am captivated by early American history and would love to interview many of the "founding fathers" and especially those who drafted the Constitution to find out what they really meant and if they understood where they were leaving things so ambiguous. Along the lines of Sherry's remarks, traveling back to the presidential election of 1876 that undid reconstruction and remedying that would have had a profound effect on the country.
selfishly, as a lover of classical music, it would be incredible to visit Mozart and Beethoven, two very different but brilliant composers from the same era...
and of course, going all the way back to the start of Christianity and following the dilution, changes, and misrepresentation of that message over 2000 plus years...
Two time period. Purely fashion stuff 1800s with the high waisted flowing dresses and the 1890s Edwardian. Too beautiful a day in New York to go political!!!
I would love to go back to observe the time period between the Reconstruction era and the 1920s in order to study the music that was being made by the former enslaved people of the south and track that music as it developed into the African American Artform (Black American Music) we now call Jazz. The first recording of what can be considered jazz was recorded in 1917, but what happened before that is only informed by written accounts and conjecture. To see/hear the “blues” form develop and become codified would be incredible!! What did the music Louis Armstrong sound like in the New Orleans of his youth?