Real time travel

I subscribed to newspapers.com, mostly because I wanted to do something over the winter that did not include casino games on the computer. Little did I know:

The old papers, as far back and as diverse as paper and ink, are a joy, a trip backward in time that we only envision in science fiction or an arcane 'we can't really explain this but --' time travel book.

I know. I wrote one. The Amos Milton Caper was a ton of fun. I might post that on my board eventually. Back-edits and such.

What's truly amazing about the old papers, depending on how far back you go, is the writing style of the various editors and reporters. It isn't to say that all of them were literary wizards. They knew how to spell and they knew how to get their point on paper.

Fair enough.

But the scale of the adventure is immeasurable. The year 1919, for example, a century ago as this blog item is being shared, tells stories that we didn't learn in school.

Hell, most of history was boiled down to a couple of paragraphs, with the important part being blah-blah-blah 'shall not be infringed' blah blah blah.

I was alive for some of this stuff.

The really fun papers are the specialty journals, though most of them lack any real context.
The best stuff is from the late 1800s, mostly about kings of Europe, the various forms of patent medicine and the price of shirts, coats, boots and hats.
The advertising is amusing, less informative. There's almost nothing that doesn't make you do a double-take. Laugh, share, absorb . . . and get a taste of the world as it was happening. You also have the benefit of a long time to reflect on what it meant. When it was published, nobody knew that.

But if you're writing period history in America, get on the 'horn' and subscribe to newspapers.com. It's not free, it's not expensive and it's a great way to avoid wasting time.

It's better than the movie and it's not the same crap you learned from Mrs. Applebottom, who only taught you what she felt like teaching you. This was before her time, too.

It's important to know that history is not linear, time is not linear, and the decisions the world made in 1874 are somewhere etched in the present. The war didn't end just because your history teacher made up some arbitrary date.

This article from the April 17, 1865 edition of the Richmond Whig, one of many periodicals over the course of American history, where the process of freedom of speech is unique across the world. The South, at least the editors of the Whig, had forecast a period of peace after Appomattox, and this dreadful act was seen as another Chapter of Hell.

If you are writing in this period, isn't it useful to know this? This, by the way, was NOT on the front page of the paper. The relative value of news isn't the issue here, since you have to go looking at times. "Jesus Returns" might be big news, but the guy who bought the liniment oil ad paid the bills.