Time Travel

Everyone knows you learn from your past. Historical events are told over and over again through the years. You’re history books are littered with events and people and historical significance. These books usually leave something vital out and that is the way of life that was kept in the past. This is where historic rooms, house museums, and outdoor museums can fill in those holes. They can take you back in time so to speak. To give you a simulation, a glimpse at the lives the people of the past lived. You can see the type of furniture they lounged or did work on. The art they chose to surround themselves with. In Keeping Time by Murtagh he talks about a historic room or house museum as a three dimensional historical document. I think that describes it well because the intended purpose of any historic room, or house museum is to be educational. To teach us how the original occupants of lived. To teach us about their habits, tastes and coveted objects. It can give us a skewed view however. The culturally/historically important are usually the buildings that are saved. This can tend to be aimed at a higher economic bracket if you will. So it can be easy to think that this is how the majority lived during that house’s given time period. A great example of this is displayed with the recent visit to Captain Frederick Pabst Mansion. This beautiful mansion which is slowly and meticulously being restored gives a wonderful look back to a period. The problem is you can miss the fact while this million dollar mansion was being build in Milwaukee, down the road people were still living in log cabins. This is where outdoor museums can help give a more complete picture set with the same educational purpose they comprise of multiple buildings restored or recreated to give that simulation to interpret a historical or cultural setting. This range can give a more broad look at the lives of people during a time in the past. Unfortunately this can become even more misleading than just viewing one level of an economic class during a period. Some outdoor museums can get out of control to the point of amusement park like entertainment if this happens the educational aspect of the museum can be lost. Regardless of a few short comings the educational value of these museums is extremely high. There really is no other way short of time travel that you can experience so closely the way someone lived from another time. This might not seem like such a necessity but if you look at the way you live to day and try to reflect on what influences your decisions and choices you make in your everyday life your environment is a huge factor. So if we can understand the way of life for the people of the past maybe we can understand on some level the reasoning behind the choices that were made that led to the world we live in today.