Living Life Like a Sponge

      I was trying to think of a way to sum up this week and its hard not to think of the contrasting images of beauty Ive seen this week and year in general. Most recently I just got back from stroll down to the Village on UCSC campus, which evidently is one of the oldest University farms in the US.  The Farm usually reminds me of the place where "the others" lived on the show LOST, or at the very least a place where some sort of cult would find residence. However today you couldn't help but take in the sunlight and all the green beauty of the grass and trees.Walking with my buddy Ian we took a lot pictures of the scenery and wild life. Combined with the storm clouds on one side of my peripheral and the sunny Monterey bay on the other you couldn't help but just soak in the amazing wonder of having such an awesome situation. Yes the Farm is usually a place I associate with murder. And it is very odd that every time I go down there I don't see a single person even though the university claims there are 100 students living there, I am still disarmed by the wonder of how much nature can bring peace.

Stevenson Apartments

My path to class

"I wonder at the hardihood with which such persons undertake to talk about God. In a treatise addressed to infidels they begin the with a chapter proving the existence of God from works of Nature... this only gives there readers grounds for thinking that the proofs of our religion are very weak... it is a remarkable fact that no canonical writer has ever used Nature to prove God."
- Pascal
(Pensees, IV, 242,243)

On the Farm

Bustop

                                                                                         

Taking the time to take in and appreciate 

the amazing little things that go around you is my path to sanity and happiness

The Historian in the Forest

UC Santa Cruz campus

Well..
Lets start with an introduction. My name is Thomas Dollar. Having the last name doesn't make it right to ask me for a dollar. In fact if you were to ask me that, my perception of your intelligence and overall positive view of you would plummet exponentially. You can take your chance with something clever, the best so far has been, "Thomas Dollar has no sense only dollars." So screen quips accordingly.
     Focusing on the subjects of my blog, Im a United States History major at UC Santa Cruz and have always been a passionate historian (history geek). That being said I spend a lot of time around primary source documents, aka diaries, journals, 1884 farmers almanacs, and ship manifestos. Its through the study of these texts we history geeks are able to paint a picture of what life was like and how people thought. From the invention of the internet and its expansion into the cyber world of social network myspace twitter evolutions, I havent paid attention to the true beauty of venues of communication like blogs.  Which is to say I am now realizing blogs, facebook,  and emails are becoming our form of preserving culture and memory onto the fabric of civilization. I envision a future UCSC student searching through endless online databases of blogspots concerning the 2010 midterm elections in the same way I now look at the diary of some dead white dude named Jamison McCullenbury to learn about slavery in West Africa! Crazy? *Taking a deep breath*...whew ya.. so I like history a lot and maybe I'm over emphasizing the magnitude of blogging, or maybe its something everyone already knows. Either way a lot of how I hope to approach my writing is in a form that I feel best reflects a preservation of history. Which admittedly after typing seems like a daunting task. But that's my goal, and anyone who reads this can offer any sort of comments they feel should be included to that future UCSC history student's report aka If my I'm too biased or just plain false.

Sunset in Monterey

     So, the basic idea of this blog is that I am going treat it as a personal thought reservoir for what and how I see the world as well as descriptions and pictures of things going on in my life. I intend to weigh in on things I think are important on local, national and international stages, giving a certain  "cool and interesting" historical spice to them. I hope you enjoy and feel free to leave me any feedback or comments. Also if you have a personal story or would like to add your own post let me know.

Until I figure out how to get my stupid computer to give me my good pix, this is my George Washington scowl

-T$

"You get three names in life: the one you inherit, the one your parents give to you, and the one you make for yourself."
-Abraham Lincoln