1. My favorite historical figure is the Erie Canal. Its birth was a long and bloody affair, commencing in 1817 when hundreds of laborers started carving out a ditch just 4 feet deep and 40 feet wide through more than 360 miles of forest, swamp and solid rock across New York State. By the time residents celebrated the completion of the Erie Canal on the Fourth of July in 1825, it had claimed the lives of more than a thousand men. Their legacy was the largest and most significant engineering project in U.S. history to date. The Canal transformed transportation, enabled westward expansion, encouraged immigration, made New York City the #1 port in the country, and grew the fortunes of settlements from Albany to Buffalo. It’s no exaggeration to call it, “The ditch that built America.”

2. We usually do judge the past through today’s lens but it’s best to assess historical events from both our own perspective and the perspective of the time period in question. How can we judge motives without understanding what people valued and believed at the time? How can we discern progress without knowing what kind of limitations people had to overcome? Anyone can judge the past through today’s lens, but only those who study history are capable of a broader, more meaningful world view.

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