Tag / native americans

by Nathan Coumbe

History is tragedy, not melodrama

One of my professors in college, a tiny little man from the Delta named Dr. Bo Morgan, said one of the most accurate and poignant statements about history to all of us historians-in-training on our first day in his class:

“History is tragedy, not melodrama.”

Melodrama: think of all the westerns from the 1950s and 60s. There were good guys and bad guys. And you could easily see who was who.

Tragedy: real people with real flaws acting the way humans do… And their flaws destroy them in the end.

History isn’t a Western, as much as our politicians would like to treat it that way. There are rarely obvious villains and heroic good guys that you can easily spot. It’s full of good people doing bad things and bad people doing good things. Flawed humans acting as such.

Acknowledging the bad things we’ve done doesn’t harm America. It doesn’t make America or Americans “bad.”

Acknowledging the Holocaust doesn’t make all Germans or Germany bad. Why would recognizing our history of systemic racism or chattel slavery or the destruction of Native Americans harm the US?

If anything, acknowledging it helps us because we can learn from it and improve the present.

There is no point in erasing or hiding any of it except to please a small fringe on one side of the aisle.

And it’s also true that labeling our country as pure evil is equally wrong, something an equally tiny fringe of extreme people on the other side has tried to do as well.

History is tragedy, not melodrama.

This post was inspired by Heather Cox Richardson’s newsletter from March 28.

by Nathan Coumbe

Art and plumbing are more similar than you think

Zig Ziglar relates a story in one of his talks about a man traveling through Native American tribes early in the 20th Century. What the man discovered was not a single person he encountered in those tribes stuttered. 

This phenomenon fascinated him, but he could never find a reason why. Finally, he asked one of the elders in the tribe why this was so. The elder informed the man there was no word in their native language for “stutter.” 

No label, no problem. 

In a fantastic article in The New Yorker, the author writes about the phenomenon known as “writer’s block.” What’s most interesting is this problem is not world-wide. The idea did not penetrate Europe until the 1800s, and even today, most Europeans don’t know what it is. It seems to be almost strictly an American issue. 

No label, no problem. If you don’t have a way to identify something as a problem, it can’t be a problem. 

We are all creative at something. We don’t get blocked: we get scared that what we create isn’t good enough. We feel there is some ethereal muse that must speak to us before we can make anything worthwhile. 

That’s crap.

Seth Godin has, what I believe to be, the most profound podcast episode I’ve ever listened to called “No such thing (as writer’s block).” One of my favorite sayings in the episode is this: “plumbers don’t get plumber’s block.” No plumber says he’s feeling too overwhelmed or uncreative enough to fix a pipe. They just fix the pipe. Surgeons don’t wait until they hear the muse speak to them to operate – they practice their craft every day and perform when it’s time to perform. 

Your art, whether it’s writing, music, painting, communicating, or leading people, is a craft – it’s a trade! Like blacksmithing, welding, or some other trade, it’s something that you learn, practice each day, and use to make something. 

If you’re a writer – write! Every day. Write something. Set a timer for 30 minutes and write. If you can’t think of what to write, write “I can’t think of anything to write,” over and over again until a new thought pops into your head. When that thought pops into your head, write it down too. Don’t worry about it making sense, being fantastic, or winning a literary prize. Just write. 

Insert your own art into the statement above and adapt it to your own situation. 

You aren’t blocked – you’re scared. Don’t wait for the muse. Do your work. 

It’s a trade like any other. 

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