Comments by "christine paris" (@christineparis5607) on "The Great Sicily Earthquake of 1693" video.

I learned a huge amount from a social studies teacher in high school. She steered me to a huge amount of information about historical events, large and small, and encouraged me to read biographies to get a sense of how different people interpreted the events they lived through. Most people have very different experiences in the same event, so multiple sources are always good to start with. I see comments all the time about how "everyone lies" about history, which to me is as false as assuming everyone tells the truth. It's usually a good idea to look at as much information as you can, not just the information that you personally identify with as being in line with your own beliefs and preferences....
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Wow! How beautiful!! I would love to go to Italy someday, my husband and I want to travel for a year and just go to the places we always wanted to see, not stay in fancy anything, just go check things out that we have seen and heard about...
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@AlessandroGenTLe YIKES!!!!!!
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@hitekrednek7664 That's good that y ok u were able to undo whatever damage you feel was forced on you, but I think still that assuming everyone has an "agenda" to "indoctrinate" you is slightly paranoid and narcissistic. Most teachers are pretty tired and a lot of them could care less what you learn or believe. I know what you think is very important to you, and you may well have been a target of some false history, but deciding that everyone is in on plots to make you into a history zombie seems like a giant overreaction. If you feel that way, you feel that way, but I encourage you not to ramp up your blood pressure with things that probably had nothing to do with you, personally, at all. It's not like they looked at seconds graders on the first day of school and decided that they would be the secret carriers of their distorted thinking to help build their army of angry children to control in the future....that's just painfully exaggerated....
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@hitekrednek7664 I appreciate your comment, but I still read and talked to a lot of people while a kid that talked about Franklin, Helen Keller, et al, as being very flawed in many ways, even in 5th grade! It was no secret. Like Kennedy sleeping with everything in a skirt, or Roosevelt having polio, a ton of people know all about it and always did. A lot of people bought the PR version, or didn't believe that someone they liked so much was just a human being, but never in school was anyone trying to lie, they usually gave us the version that was the goody two shoes rhetoric, then always said, "But...they were ALSO.." Whatever they were. I know there is a book, a bunch of them, on the dumbing down of America, but that is usually someone's opinion, conspiracy theory, or personal agenda against whatever group is promoting it. Church people here always fight to keep sex education out of schools, and others want the bible taught as literal, some want Nietzsche, no one agrees, so the schools usually go with who donates the most. Churches usually have the most money... I don't think it's a big, scary attempt to do anything but keep the politicians rich or the big corporations happy. Now, you can look up whatever you want online so there is no excuse for staying stupid. Most people only look at what they agree with and won't consider any other view, so no one has to try and keep them stupid, they WANT to be... That's why I say people have a responsibility to look at multiple sources and all the evidence they can. Just being open to other information, even if you don't buy it, is still a good idea. I will look at different books, articles, etc., then try to think about or discuss it. Sometimes I see things differently and at others I don't. It's just how people grow. Big companies are always going to control the agenda to benefit themselves, people are selfish and greedy, and really rich people are spoiled and always want their own way, it's just human nature.
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@hitekrednek7664 I was in the Bay Area in the 70s and in high school they took out the desks and we sat on bean bag chairs, which are NOT comfortable, while our English teacher got high and read Watership Down out loud to the class for an hour. This was in Palo Alto and there were a lot of radical young Stanford students doing some teaching at Palo Alto High School. One guy, I cannot remember his name, I wish I could, smuggled in a tape from the infamous Stanford "jail experiment" where some students were guards and some were prisoners and the guards became so sadistic in less than 48 hours that they had to shut it down (I'm sure you've heard of it or seen it, there was a documentary and movie about it...). Watching that, taking place a few blocks away, totally opened up my experience of psychology and human nature and what average people are capable of...it was so disturbing that I've never forgotten it. It was the same year, I think, as the ritualistic murder in the Stanford chapel on campus, where the murderer was never caught. We had the zodiac killer, the Berkeley rapist, you name it, it seemed to be happening...I think our teachers were either completely burnt out and retiring and being replaced with angry young people who felt all of life was a lie or a construct that had to be broken and remade. A lot of them were way too into drugs, but most were completely brilliant, sincere and intense. They wanted us to ask why, about everything. Of course Ken Kesey was right up the road, working at a mental health facility and stealing their tranquilizers so he could write his classic novel....it was insane. I left home fairly early, but I had an addiction to reading that has stayed with me all these years. I will read about anything, good bad, crazy, classic, I don't care, I'm always interested in where the person who wrote is coming from..
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@PRH123 Thank you!!! I would love to go!!!
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Didn't Roberto Rossellini make a film called Stromboli in the 50s, with Ingrid Bergman? I read somewhere that the volcano was extremely dangerous to the actors and crew as they strove for realism and exposed themselves to imminent eruption.
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@stevedietrich8936 The movie Stromboli is responsible for Ingrid Bergman's divorce and the birth of her son and twin girls with Roberto, one of which is Isabella Rossellini, who modeled and lived with David Lynch for years, appearing in most of his films, like "Blue Velvet". All this stuff always fascinates me, the natural world and dangers that throw people together in intense relationships. Volcanoes seem to be responsible for many volatile situations. Pompei is the classic example we still find riveting today. I'd love to see it someday!! I have never been out of the USA except to the Islands in the Carribean...
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