The Mumpsimus

A well - lived life of 87 years is something to celebrate and be joyful for , but some deaths strongly separate the world that remains for us, the living, from the one that was there only a few hours or days before. Howard Zinn almost single-handedly changed the way I saw the world.  I was in high school when I encountered A People's History of the United States and Declarations of Independence and I have never been the same since.  They hit me like alien messages from a more enlightened planet.  I'm not sure I've ever learned as much from any other books, if learning can be defined not only as the gaining of information but the adding of awareness, the opening of new vistas previously hidden.  I expect this was Zinn's effect for many people, especially those who, like me, encountered his writings during particularly impressionable years. I went to lectures Zinn gave three or four times, mostly during the mid-1990s.  I bought audio tapes o...