It Follows The Seasons, Beginning Each Year

It Follows The Seasons, Beginning Each Year With The Fond Expectancy Of Springtime And Ending With The Hard Facts Of Autumn.

I Think We Continually Need To Understand How Important An Event The War Was - How Defining, How Central To Who We Are. Everything That Came Before It Led Up To It, And Everything Of Importance To This Country - At Least Up To 1940 - Was A Consequence Of It. Even Now There's An Echo Of The War, However Faint, In Almost Everyone's Life.

World War Ii Is Smothered In Sentimentality And Nostalgia. What's Interesting About Vietnam Is That Sentimentality Is Just Not There, So You're Given Kind Of A Clean Access To It In One Way. It's Also A War That Represents A Failure For The United States. Many People Came Back Feeling Like They Never Wanted To Talk About It Again. And So We Developed A National Amnesia.

You Need, As A Historian, Essential Triangulation From Your Subject And The Only Way You Get That Triangulation Is Through Time.

Write: Write Letters. Keep Journals. Besides Your Children, There Is No Surer Way Of Achieving Immortality.