Dreaming History

One of the characters I met at Readercon a week ago, happens to be a well known, and award winning writer, Howard Waldrop. I happen to be reading a book currently, Custer's Last Jump, that collects all his stories that he wrote in collaboration with other writers, such as Leigh Kennedy, Steve Utley, and George R.R. Martin. 
In the story he wrote with Leigh Kennedy, they take the story of the Trojan War, and turn it into something very real, and personal. The story, which is about the Greeks Trojan Horse trick, focuses on only a handful of characters, both in the past, and in the much closer present. The point is, they did a wonderful job of breathing life into an ancient story, and made me think about this moment in time, and appreciate it, in a way I not ever done so before. What seemed to be such a simple story to tell (simple in appearance only, I would wager), brought history to life for me.
Most of the history teachers I had in school were really quite boring, and would do their best to kill our (my and my fellow students') imaginations. I do remember one history teacher whose class I enjoyed because of the stories he told. And they were fantastic stories. 
History should not be considered a collection of past events that no longer have any importance, and are viewed as being akin to the Dead Sea. Dead, that is.
We view time as linear. I don't believe it is. I once heard a theory (I think it was also put forth in a movie) that all the moments in time exist at once. If you could just turn the corner fast enough, you might meet Cleopatra, Benjamin Franklin, or Homer before he wrote about Odysseus. 
Anyroad. History is all around us, all the time. And every day we are witnessing history as it happens. Particularly in this age of the computer, ipad, and the smart phone. It's become quite a connected world. But we are not just connected to the present. We are always connected to the past as well. And we should remember that. After all, you can't know where you're going, if you don't know where you came from...