Chronicles

Here under the Bearing Witness Heartland Chronicles we watch and record history as it is happening in front of us, as well as how the future of our country and planet is being manifested, intentionally or not, by our actions and inactions. As has been often said “There are times when you must speak, not because you are going to change the other person, but because if you don’t speak, they have changed you.”

BWH Chronicles is not intended to be a news feed for active following of which there are already too many repeating many of the same stories. Instead, its function is to select and record a succinct snapshot of the most important news events, across a few timely categories, in chronological order to show the progression of historical events over a few months and then years of time. This is something not performed well by traditional media, social media, or even news sites which focus on breaking news instead of the arc of history. And for historians looking through archives of news sources long afterwards – assuming the digital sites and stories are preserved and not censored by political winners or plundered by profit seekers – it is often very hard to reconstruct or resurrect years later.

In this blog I am currently following the category topics of the President Trump Administration, Climate Change, and the 2020 Pandemic. The news recorded under each of these subjects comes from a variety of print, broadcast, and digital media sources. These include national, international, regional, and local sources as I am a hopeless news nerd. (Please support the news media that is required to maintain a well-informed public as the foundation for democracy.) In Climate Chronicles I try to cite a link to the original source whenever possible. The editorial comments associated with news items are mine alone.