Why Founders Day?

Post written and copyrighted 2014 by Doris McCraw

On Sunday July 27, 2014 the "Think You Know History" series continues with a special Founders Day Celebration at the Historic Evergreen Cemetery and Chapel. This free event celebrates beginnings, Colorado Springs; Colorado and the wonderful history of this region. For more information contact: evergreencemeterysociety@yahoo.com

Founders Day! Why celebrate something that happened so many years ago? The question is probably what most folks today wonder. It is much like the old house that has stood the test of time and is no longer considered relevant to the modern world. When something is not considered important, you get rid of it. Yet what price do we pay when we no longer care about what came before?

George Santayana, a Spanish philosopher, wrote “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” If we do not learn the past; learn from the past, then not only can we not remember it, we are condemned to repeat it. The gift we can give ourselves and our future generations is the gift of knowledge. Not just names and dates, but the events, environment and mindset of those earlier days. How do we do that?

Many of us when we talk of knowledge think of the stuffy classroom, the required papers and the rote learning of “Columbus sailed the Ocean Blue in 1492.” But knowledge and learning can be, and is so much more.

For some of us, it is days spent reading newspapers and literature from the past. It is verifying facts and figures, not just accepting what one person said, for they may have been biased. For others it is taking part in or listening to lectures - historic speakers. Perhaps trips to museums, or living history museums are the order of the day.

One way to capture the time, the feel and the memory of those early days, and teach children, is to take part in events that were so much a part of our past. The celebrations, the food, games, music all are ways to experience what it may have been like for our fore-bearers.

So why Founders Day? Because it is a chance to interact with history, the chance to experience the fun and maybe learn a thing or two. It is also the chance to actually speak with people face to face. Now that can be a novel concept these days.

Follow my haiku post five days a week at: http://fivesevenfivepage.blogspot.com

To read the story of Colorado's first film commissioner, Karol W. Smith, check out "Film & Photography on the Front Range" which can be purchased at http://www.amazon.com

Available for purchase from:

Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Smashwords

'Interview' with Helen Hunt Jackson

For fun this week I thought it might be fun to 'interview' Helen Hunt Jackson using her own words. I hope you enjoy. The photo is from my recent performance at the Pikes Peak Library District as Helen Hunt Jackson

As you were traveling to the west you made some unique observations. Would you share some of those thoughts?

Prairie, unfenced, undivided, unmeasured, unmarked, save by the different tints of different growths of grass or grain; great droves of cattle grazing here and there; acres of willow saplings, pale yellowish green; and solitary trees, which look like hermits in a wilderness. These, and now and then a shapeless village, which looks even lonelier than the empty loneliness by which it is surrounded, - these are all for hours and hours. We think, “now we are getting out into the great spaces.” “This is what the word ‘West’ has sounded like.”

You seem to like the lower elevations as opposed to the high peaks. Why do you think that?

I think that true delight, true realization, of the gracious, tender, unutterable beauty of the earth and all created things are to be found in outlooks from lower points—vistas which shut more than they show, sweet and unexpected revealings in level places and valley, secrets of near woods, and glories of every-day paths.

You are quoted as saying there are nine places of worship in Colorado Springs. What are the?

There are nine “places of divine worship” in Colorado Springs, -- the Presbyterian, the Cumberland Presbyterian, the Methodist, the South Methodist, the Episcopal, the Congregationalist, the Baptist, the Unitarian, and Cheyenne Canyon.

What do you do when the snow covers the ground?

... winter..... memory and fancy will have their way; and, as we sit cowering over fires, and the snow piles up outside our window sills, we shall gaze dreamily into the glowing coals, and, living the summer over again, shall recall it in a minuteness of joy, for summer days were too short and summer light too strong. Then, when joy becomes reverie, and reverie takes shape, a truer record can be written....

Thank you Mrs. Jackson. I hope you will join me again later to share more of your insights.