The Great Depression
I don’t know a great deal about The Great Depression, just enough to talk about it for about three weeks to high school students. One of the things I know is that, despite the awful economic conditions, many people report those years as very happy. People say that families and communities really pulled together and that was great.
Every time I teach my classes about The Depression some student asks “could this happen again?”. My answer to this is that it is possible but not likely. There is much more monitoring and government intervention these days. The memory looms large enough that we are a bit more careful. When I say all of this I mostly believe it.
Still it makes my blood run a little cold when I read about the economic events in the United States at the moment. And no number of pat answers from me or anyone else manages to shift that anxiety completely.
Lesson for the day – it makes no sense to fear what you can’t control which would be fine if that meant we didn’t fear such things all the same.
Previously on this date..
- After the Show - 2007
- Show Time - 2007
- Birthday Girl - 2007
- The Golden Age Of Music - 2006
- Big Red and Beautiful - 2006
- Vanilla Milkshake - 2005
- Plain As Plain Can Be - 2005
- The Worm Turns - 2005
- Eight Hundred Utterly Worthless Words To Go - 2004
- Bowling Versus Assignments - 2004
- Loves To Bowl - 2004
- One Day To Go - 2004
- The Power Of Voice - 2003
- Twenty Seven. I Don't Think So Tim - 2003
- Contributions - 2003
- The Netherlands - 2003
- Being Clever - 2003
- The Bear - 2003
- Missed It By That Much - 2003
- Made of Hardy Stuff - 2002
- Busy Like Viv - 2002
- So Few Miracles - 2002
I saw this statue thing from the pic in DC. It’s cool
Given some commentators are saying things like “never seen since the Great Depression” and “unprecedented” and so on, is it any wonder even the kids are nervous?
We used to work next to an Italian couple who had migrated to Australia many years before. They were tossing up between Argentina and Australia. At the time standard of living and the economy looked much better in Argentina. Can’t remember why they chose Australia in the end, but 12 years ago they were glad they had. They were always nervous about Australia though, having seen Argentina slide down.
That’s my contribution to joy for the day