My ticket to South Africa is booked! Let joy be unconfined! I am so excited, I can't begin to tell you. Of course, it is six months away, this trip, so I have plenty of time to get jaded and blasé.
Back in the day, they used to have segregated park benches. Chiseled across the back rest would be 'Whites Only' or 'Nie Blankes'. I wonder what they've done with them? A first guess would be that they dug 'em all up and burned them. But what if they didn't have the money to replace them? If they were left in place, oh joy, we would have legions of black bums sitting on 'Whites Only' seats.
But what about future generations? The ones who, if they don't learn from history, are condemned to repeat it? Maybe they will have kept one bench, and cordoned it off, or maybe built a plexiglass protective enclosure and pumped it full of inert preservative gases, where The People can come and be reminded of the idiocies of yesteryear.
ps What exactly is an 'historical imperative'? Fabulous phrase, but I have no idea what it means.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
4 comments:
I think it has to do with not forgetting our past - history compels us to do/remember/change etc.
you won't get jaded or blase, you'll just get more and more and more excited!
sorry, I thought you meant hysterical imperative. Isn't that a desire for chocolate?
What a lovely trip to look forward to...
oh dang, do the bio-tour of the mist highland ecosystem!!!
yeah i know...a barrel of laughs. but still...
Post a Comment