By Way of Introduction

If memory serves, it was just after I turned the high school driver's ed car into oncoming traffic that I had a brief exchange with my instructor about the study of history. 

One on-ramp looked like another, and "keep to the right" hadn't yet become second nature for me. Thankfully, the detour was brief, the path was free of other cars, and I am here as a licensed driver to share the memory.

My teacher wasn't especially upset or panicked by my poor skills at the wheel. But perhaps he wanted to change the subject. Or perhaps he simply wanted to make conversation. So, he asked me what I was planning to study in college. 

I told him I had no idea.  

In addition to being a driving instructor, Mr. H. taught history. He suggested I study history. 

Why, I asked him. 

"Because that's where all the good stories are. It's all stories. You're studying stories. You should think about being a history major."

It was advice I did not take. 

It was, however, the first time I was made to think about what "History" meant. I did not consider it long or well at the time, but something about it stuck in my brain. The very same brain that didn't know which lane to turn on to. 

It was a turning point that wasn't, a false start that I am still trying to correct. For if history didn't become my vocation, it has become a thing to which I keep returning.

I am ceaselessly fascinated with the ways we approach the past. How we conjure it and recreate it. How its tendrils lick at our present, and how it can touch us – and even sometimes really, literally touch us – from a temporal remove. How we mold it and shape it as much as it molds and shapes us. How we use it to make sense of ourselves.

How we learn about it, how we preserve it. How we lose it. How we—

I can keep going. There are so many cliches. And there is so much to explore. 

Which brings me to this newsletter/blog/publication/series, Previous Engagement. (My brother thinks it sounds like the title of a prim romantic comedy, and he is not wrong. But if anyone mistakes this for that, then I have steered this car into oncoming traffic and truly should lose my license.) 

Previous Engagement will feature writing, interviews, videos and images that probe history and our study of it. Like most things, it will change over time. I hope it will not bore you, and that hope is inscribed in the very title of the thing. I hope it will be engaging. Where all the good stories are. 

Thank you for joining me.