Perfection

Hi, all. The new year promises a great deal of change that I welcome with all my heart. The shift is to cooperative relationships from competitive ones. It seems all my life I have been looking forward to this time, not knowing when it would come.

Yesterday a resolution became clear and I have decided to post it here for your benefit, to propagate this idea, this meme. It's message is simple and positive.

I am not perfect. I am just right the way I am.

Please carry this idea with you always. It is true for you, just as it is true for me.

Forgive me, it has been a while since my last post, uh, confession, uh, whatever. For more than two weeks I mired myself in writing a history about the U.S. relationship with the environment before 1960. The focus is on public policy developments during that period. It is my first independent attempt at writing scholarly history. A difficult assignment requiring 8,000 words (around 27 pages). To my surprise I enjoyed it thoroughly! I have decided to seek more work of this kind.

My first experience with creating an original history came during my doctoral studies in journalism at the University of Maryland in College Park. For nearly two years I assisted broadcast history Prof. Douglas Gomery with his quest to answer how television came to the United States. Tedious work, but the revelations it provided led to original ideas, and that was exciting! It made me wide-eyed many times. The extensive findings I provided became part of his 2006 book, "Television Industries."

The environmental policy history I just finished writing will appear in a forthcoming reference encyclopedia titled, "The U.S. Government and the Environment," on ABC-CLIO's publication schedule for 2010. Matt Lindstrom, director of the Eugene J. McCarthy Center for Public Policy and Civic Engagement at St. John's University in Minnesota is editing the project. So far I have contributed around 10,000 words to the effort.

During the writing process I corrected (or updated) Wikipedia a few times. That was fun. It was a first.

For anyone investigating relationships between the U.S. and the environment, I recommend looking at the encyclopedia when it becomes available, particularly online. One astonishing fact I discerned: in terms of environmental policy, politicians in power during The Progressive Era (1890-1920) reverted to forward-thinking of the Age of Enlightenment (1600-1789). We think of the Progressive Era as a time of heightened awareness about the aesthetic and moral advantages of preserving wilderness. It was, but only on occasion in the halls of Congress.

Until next time.