Thursday, March 23, 2017

Open Window

Public domain
I've always been a history buff, as far back as I can remember. The past, and especially the people who lived then, fascinate me. I might have been a history teacher if my high school guidance counselor hadn't counseled me that, "History teachers are a dime a dozen!"

Being a lover of history has colored a lot of the choices I've made. It's partly why Doctor Who is my favorite TV program (he can travel anywhere in time and space) and why Christianity is my favorite religion (based on a collection of ancient books).

It also colors the stuff I watch on YouTube. Last night I came upon this video and was just transfixed by it the whole way through. There are scads of 100+ year old films on YouTube, but this one was in color! I'm sure it must be colorized, but watching this film of people going about their business 117 years ago -- all of them long since gone -- had the feel of raising a window and sticking my head back in time.

The fact that we see things like this all the time today in period piece movies kind of numbs you to these scenes. But if you can suspend that and cast your mind back into these long gone moments and convince yourself for a moment that these are real people living their real lives, you can almost feel what 1900 was like.

Then remind yourself that all of history was like that, real people living real lives. We just didn't have cameras to film them.






2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Great video! What I find most interesting is how many people are literally out on the streets in those pre/early automobile days.

Pleonic said...

I know! You'd think the carriages and horse poop would keep them on the sidewalk.