%title Snowball fight in Lyons, over a hundred years ago
:webquote:
%date 2022-01-22 01:46

https://solarpunkfuturenow.tumblr.com/post/673826073402900480/keepcalmandcarriefischer-petermorwood#_=_

“On an intellectual level, we all understand that historical people were basically just like us. All those stiff figures frozen in blurred photos and smoke-stained oil paintings — the endless parade of side-whiskers, small dogs, billowing dresses, baggy trousers….They lived, as we do, in the throbbing nerve-pocket of the now. They were anxious and unsure, bored and silly. Nothing that would happen in their lifetimes had happened yet. The ocean of time was crashing fresh waves, nonstop, against the rocks of their days. And like us they stood there, gasping in the cold spray, wondering what people of the past were like.

“And yet it’s hard, across such wide gulfs of time, to really feel this connection. So to watch this snowball fight, to see these people so alive, is a precious gift of perspective. We are them. They are us. We, too, will disappear. We will become abstractions to be puzzled over by future people. That certainty, in the flux of 2020, feels anchoring. We are not unique. We move in the historical flow.
