Sketching History: July 2014

Sunday, July 6, 2014

Baby, You're a Firework

Happy Independence Day! The 4th of July is always one of my favorite holidays, and it's because I love fireworks. I love the colors, the loud noise, the whole thing.

Did you know that fireworks were first created in China between 600-900 AD? (Sometimes history is a little vague on when things happened, especially if it was a long time ago before good records were kept.) For a brief history of fireworks, check out this article on www.history.com: Fireworks' Vibrant History

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Why History?

"Sketching history provides a way of catching men in motion, of holding subjects up to unfamiliar light and examining their complexities from different angles. It also can convey the sense of coming up against surprising varieties of humanity in the course of research."

"...the reconstruction of worlds is one of the historian's most important tasks. He undertakes it, not from some strange urge to dig up archives and sift through old papers, but because he wants to talk with the dead. By putting questions to documents and listening for replies, he can sound dead souls and take the measure of the societies they inhabited. If we lost all contact with the worlds we have lost, we would be condemned to live in a two-dimensional, time-bound present, and our own world would turn flat."

~ Robert Darnton

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Sunday, July 6, 2014

Baby, You're a Firework