Jill and
Jill and
epidemics patterns disease
Epidemics follow patterns because diseases follow patterns. Viruses spread; they reproduce; they die.
generations mouths down-and
Folklore used to be passed by word of mouth, from one generation to the next; thats what makes it folklore, as opposed to, say, history, which is written down and stored in an archive.
order epidemics stories
Epidemiologists study patterns in order to combat infection. Stories about epidemics follow patterns, too. Stories arent often deadly, but they can be virulent: spreading fast, weakening resistance, wreaking havoc.
world citizens kindergarten
In kindergarten, you can learn how to be a citizen of the world.
roots century made
Nineteenth-century grass-roots populism made twentieth-century progressivism possible.
father would-be records
Jane Francklyne, born in 1565, had lived for less than a month. She left very little behind. She was buried in the Ecton churchyard, but her father would hardly have paid a carver to engrave so small a stone. If not for the parish register, there would be no record that this Jane Francklyne had ever lived at all. History is what is written and can be found; what isn't saved is lost, sunken and rotted, eaten by the earth.
illusion
In antihistory, time is an illusion.
get-better may world
The world may not be getting better and better, but our devices are getting newer and newer.
senior moving age
Stages of life are artifacts. Adolescence is a useful contrivance, midlife is a moving target, senior citizens are an interest group, and tweenhood is just plain made up.
book tree way
Old reference books are like tree rings. Without them, there'd be no way to know what a tree had lived through.
marketing quarters stage
Mainly, the more faddish and newer stages of life are really just marketing schemes. Tweenhood. The young old. The quarter-life crisis.
strong hard-work boys
You can be strong as any boy if you'll work hard and train yourself in athletics, the way boys do.
trying way next
History is hereditary only in this way: we, all of us, inherit everything, and then we choose what to cherish, what to disavow, and what do do next, which is why it's worth trying to know where things come from.
past innovation novelty
Conservatism cherishes tradition; innovation fetishizes novelty. They tug in different directions, the one toward the past, the other toward the future.