Year After Year

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.