Ah, the joys of being on campus

Got to go to a lecture yesterday. One of those pesky revisionist type things. You know the ones. The kind where some hotshot University Professor thinks that doing research based on historical record is going to give a more accurate picture of the past than Hollywood movies or newspapers or dime novels. Who the hell do these people think that they are anyway?

The Oregon Trail. Dooom Doooom.

Not the site of so many massacres that no movie studio could ever keep up with it. At least not between 1840 and 1869. Do tell. Well, apparently, the two Big massacres that have been passed down from generation to generation where big bad Indians killed frail helpless white settlers by the hundreds - the Doniphan and Almo Massacres, if you're keeping track - were made up. Fabricated. Invented. To sell papers in the former case and to increase tourism in the latter.

Seriously. He said so. And he wrote a book about it, and other human interest concerns (trading, medicine, starvation, people shooting themselves in the face accidentally because guns were designed less with safety in mind back then). And the book won him an award. And I believe him. Why? Not because of any particular guilt I have left over, but because the story that he tells makes more sense. Living on the plains now is difficult enough. It is important to know who your neighbors are and how to live in the winter and such and such. Can you imagine what it was before all of that? There were guide books to the Trail, but still. Human interaction works best when it is not defined by conflict (trust me on this one, I know of what I speak). So why turn the prairie into a place of perpetual warfare? I know, I know, that's what it became, and this is dealing with a very specific place (the Oregon Trail) during a very specific time frame (1840-1869). That is important to remember.

People are stupid. We are born stupid. We die stupid. We can learn to be not so stupid, but it is very easy to go back to stupid ways. All we need are enough drink, drugs, sex or sensationalism and boom, the brain is gone.

So the newspapers sold stories. Stories of vicious attacks by savage people. They got folk to leave their homes and head West, looking to kill injuns or have the grand adventure on the high plains, since going by sea would have defeated the whole purpose.

Go back to Little House on the Prairie or Caddie Woodlawn. Tell me what you find and then look at what the adults buy and tell me we deserve to maintain as a species.

Also there was some very bad art hanging on the walls, and some woman asked if I had anything hanging there and then proceeded to talk at me about the colors in an odious landscape.

Can someone please explain to me what exactly is the value of dropping my "get the fuck away from me" vibe if it's just going to encourage bad conversation? Ug.