History Opens a Window
By Alicia Barber, PhD
In times of both calm and chaos, history provides critical context for our lives. Most would agree that a knowledge of past events and decisions is essential to understanding our government, our institutions, our cultures and traditions.
Equally important in my mind is history’s humanitarianism—its potential to inspire compassion, respect, and humility. We tend, I think, to be a present and future-minded people, making our decisions on the basis of how they will impact ourselves, those we know, and, hopefully, those who will follow us.
History affords us an even broader perspective, directing our gaze not just ahead and around us, but in all directions. At its best, history cracks open a window through which we can glimpse the people who walked these paths before us, people we will never meet. We can learn of their motivations, their struggles and joys, their ambitions and fears. We can make furtive steps toward understanding not just what they did, and when, but how they accomplished it, and why it meant something to them.
We learn all of this most powerfully through stories. And when we pay heed to the stories of those who came before us, when we gain empathy and insight into what they overcame, what they created, and what made them most proud, we start to see the world differently. We begin to recognize ourselves as the caretakers of what they built—where they lived and worked and played—just as surely as we are the stewards of the earth we have inherited.
That knowledge, in turn, can provide us with a deeper and more meaningful connection to our world and those with whom we share it. Many of us are infinitely more familiar with the history of the nation than that of our community or state. That’s especially true in Nevada, where less than one in five adult residents was born here. We didn’t grow up with a natural affinity for this place or with the generations who have called it home.
Stories can help bridge that gap by transporting us across the expanses of space and time, strengthening our collective sense of place and perpetuating the public memory of what happened here. As a public historian, I try to tell these stories in every way I can, to turn walls into windows. Our digital screens can become portals into Reno’s historic landscape, its famous divorce industry, the Lincoln Highway corridor, Nevada’s native cultures, and oral histories from throughout the state. Photographs from the past can transform our bus shelters, hallways, and sidewalks into time machines, adding layers of richness to where we stand. Speakers can beam voices from the past directly into our homes with immediacy and emotion.
History beckons us to open ourselves to all of these stories, to acknowledge with humility our own fleeting place in time’s continuum, to fling back the curtains and greet with curiosity what lies through that window, and in doing so, to welcome ourselves home.
Silver State Sisters: Women Transforming Nevada, a permanent installation in the Nevada State Capitol. Molly Walt photo.
Image/renodivorcehistory.org
Alicia Barber, PhD, is a public historian, writer, and founder of the historical consulting firm Stories in Place. She is the author of Reno’s Big Gamble: Image and Reputation in the Biggest Little City.
Image/Alicia Barber, PhD