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