So many changes are predicted for 2025! With the holiday hustle, seasonal scheduling drift, and general uneasiness around social disharmony, it is easy to cast a wary eye at the new year.
Calming comfort, however, can be found among the 50-year-old local news reports now being digitized and methodically uploaded to the NHF searchable database, thanks to the support of an NEH grant. Some things, it seems, just never change as public issues and politicians’ talking points.
That fact — the stability of social attention, if not its solutions — is something worth looking at when all seems bleak, so that it can be said, at least, “we’ve been here before, again and again.”
For example, here are some clips from 50 years ago about raising taxes and government spending:
https://collection.oldfilm.org/Detail/occurrences/11916
https://collection.oldfilm.org/Detail/occurrences/11977
https://collection.oldfilm.org/Detail/occurrences/21500
https://collection.oldfilm.org/Detail/occurrences/7723
https://collection.oldfilm.org/Detail/occurrences/10400
Here are some clips from 50 years ago about the environment, particularly in relation to oil refineries:
https://collection.oldfilm.org/Detail/occurrences/19710
https://collection.oldfilm.org/Detail/occurrences/15973
https://collection.oldfilm.org/Detail/occurrences/6598
https://collection.oldfilm.org/Detail/occurrences/7129
https://collection.oldfilm.org/Detail/occurrences/5543
https://collection.oldfilm.org/Detail/occurrences/23843
https://collection.oldfilm.org/Detail/occurrences/15563
https://collection.oldfilm.org/Detail/occurrences/6431
https://collection.oldfilm.org/Detail/occurrences/7019
Here are some clips from 50 years ago about wildlife, hunting, parks and recreation in the state:
https://collection.oldfilm.org/Detail/occurrences/18014
https://collection.oldfilm.org/Detail/occurrences/19407
https://collection.oldfilm.org/Detail/occurrences/19229
https://collection.oldfilm.org/Detail/occurrences/10169
Here are some clips from 50 years ago about dissent:
https://collection.oldfilm.org/Detail/occurrences/12106
https://collection.oldfilm.org/Detail/occurrences/19343
https://collection.oldfilm.org/Detail/occurrences/20538
https://collection.oldfilm.org/Detail/occurrences/6426
Happy New Year! And here is hoping that the lessons from the past move some solutions toward the center of social attention.