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Crouching Under History

I've got a lot of notes from various paper-based journals and logs of mine. Here's one from my cross-country drive in May of 2000:


5/23/00 1:11 pm

I'm at the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base Museum in Ohio. I write this note as I�m crouching under the bomb bay doors of the B-29 �Bock�s Car� � The plane that dropped the atomic bomb on Nagasaki, in August, 1945. I reach up and touch the seam where the doors close. How amazing that these are the very doors that opened up to drop the bomb that effectively ended World War II.
Later � I write this while standing on the 707 that was Air Force One for JFK and LBJ. I�m standing at the spot where JFK�s casket was carried, also where LBJ was sworn in.

...I had almost forgotten about the impression seeing those two planes had made on me. The Past is Prologue. Study the Past. Those two statements are carved in stone on the bases of the two statues in front of the National Archives in Washington, D.C.. I have heard these words attributed to Plato, but I'm not sure that they're his words. Regardless, they're wise instructions.