The people you meet ...

Marko has put up the most fascinating proposition - if you could could spend any ONE year in any time of the US.... when and why?

the fine print. void where prohibited.

After some pondering, I finally settled on America's Centennial year. We were far enough along to have our own unique culture by that point - we had pretty much figured out what being American meant, even if we still disagreed heartily on the specifics.

The 1870's are an odd crossroads of history. Heck, all the collectivist utopian dreams that would result in such bloodshed seventy years later were already starting to wander the intellectual landscape. The 20th century was already well foreshadowed that early. At the same time, our frontier was still wide open - this was the age of the high "Wild West," all full of bustling energy as the empty spaces of the map started to fill up.

What struck me most though was the conversations you could have in that time. You could talk with retired Pony Express riders, California Forty-Niners, or even the old mountain men of the 1840's Northwest. Civil War vets of both sides, cowboys, and frontier marshals. Turn east - Emerson, Whitman, Clemens - so many of the classics of American lit were writing then. Old abolitionists and old slaves. Thomas Edison had just started work at Menlo Park, and some guy named Bell had just put in for a patent on something called a "telephone." Yankee industry was exploding - with effects both wondrous and horrific.

America old and new - what a time to live!


That got me thinking though - there's at least as many fascinating stories to ask now. This to will be a time for the history books, of that much I'm sure. I may yet have to try a trip of that kind for real in our own time someday. Coming up with an 1870's itinerary was hard enough.. what about 2010?

Hrmm... food for thought.

What voices would you just HAVE to record, given a year to wander the US of our time?