Historical breakfast
Throgs Neck Bridge, NYC
It’s Saturday and I woke up incredibly early. I like these moments, when everything is still and calm. Everything except a few birds, of course, which can be annoying occasionally. This morning the crickets in the surrounding fields seem to be more “chatty” than the birds, though.
After watching the news on TV, I decided to look for some short but interesting show to leave on while putting some order in the living room. My brother works in a hotel, he’s in charge of the swimming pool safety team, and I think he starts guessing the waiters and housekeepers at the hotel also work at his house here, haha!
Anyway, I ended up on the History Channel. I really like it. I don’t have a favorite century or historic time, I like a bit of everything, as long as the documentary is well narrated and presented. Some can be extremely boring, but the one I found this morning caught my attention. It was about William Howe and George Washington: the Battle of Bunker Hill & Boston Siege, the Battle of Long Island, the Jamaica Pass, Throgs Neck Bridge, the Battle of Harlem Heights… and how it all ended, with Washington retaking most of the lost territories about two years after Howe’s ‘victory’. (link to the doc) In fact, Howe was pretty good, but didn’t really finish what he had started and eventually Washington & co. won.
Other link on this topic: New York and New Jersey Campaign
I realized I know rather little about the US History. I know more about European history, of course. And I attended French high school, which has a pretty extensive history program compared to other European schools. We also had classes about Asian history, go figure.
I believe the problem is that there is so much to say, so many events, it is truly impossible to cover them all in a secondary education program. That’s why I dig documentaries. They are short and focused on one main topic at the time. Different points of view and comments can also be shown in interviews to scholars or historians, during the film. And the visual media is so much more powerful than a book. I noticed books can be very difficult to read for non-historians. They too often get into too much detail or the writing lacks of appeal to the uninitiated reader. Instead, docs are really interesting and I seem to retain much more info from a documentary than from a book.
Also, this one was narrated by Luigi La Monica (this time I didn’t switch to the original audio, I left the Italian one. Cut me some slack, it was early morning), who has narrated a lot of documentaries, besides having dubbed, among others, Chris Noth in most of his works. I found it ironic, given the documentary was about New York.
Oh… someday I shall write about voices, dubbers (voice-over), narrators etc.
Till then… Happy 4th of July, guys!
*photo: Throgs Neck Bridge on a misty December morning, almost 6 years ago
