Why Bother?

Why bother?  Several years ago, a rude little girl surprised me with an unexpected but profoundly important question – Why do we do this?  Why is it important?  IS IT important?

All Roads Lead to Needham – that phrase pops up occasionally in the weekly stories, but I chose it as the title for the book and related podcast because for me it encapsulates the very great importance of our local history.

Several years ago, when I was still new in this job, and before we had the Schoolhouse, the third graders would come to the Glendoon House for their annual field trip.  One morning, I had a class there and I’m telling them all about the Historical Society and how we’re the town museum and we preserve Needham’s history and all that.  When I’m done, one little angel looks up at me and asks – “Why bother?”

Why bother?  I confess the question took me aback.  But she had asked a profoundly important question – Why do we do this?  Why is it important?  Is it important?

Why bother?  Bothering is what I do all day.  We live in a town that has history.  Our official incorporation dates back more than 300 years, and if you count the years of people being here the total is closer to 400.  We’ve been here longer than the country we belong to, and our history surrounds us.  A college dedicated to cutting edge innovation in engineering overlooks a house that was built in 1707.  The Broadmeadow School butts up against ditches that were dug in the 1600s to drain those same Broad Meadows.  And that’s just European history – we have a native artifact in the collections that dates back 9000 years.

People will tell me that they are “not history buffs.” That they find local history to be kinda boring.  And my favorite – “Nothing important ever happened here.”  What is the point, they say, of memorizing all of those places and dates – a list of free-floating events, untethered to any reality that they know.

But I love history, and I especially love local history.  All those important names and dates are not discrete untethered events – they are the big culmination of innumerable small events.   Think of them as the powder keg at the end of a very long fuse. The fuse gets lit when some discovery or conflict or partnership is initiated, and burns steadily until the spark reaches the keg.  The big event is the explosion; but that doesn’t happen until someone lights and nurtures the fuse – the many small events keeping the spark alive as it burns inevitably toward the keg. Local history links those big events together and gives them meaning.  The explosions are spectacular, but they don’t happen until the fuse is lit in towns like Needham.

So, why bother?  How did I answer that little girl?  I told her what I tell everyone who thinks that local history is not important.  No one believes that American history is not important.  But you don’t have national history if you don’t have local history.  Big national events happen because they spent years churning here as local events.  They happen because someone here lit the fuse.

So don’t tell me that nothing important ever happened here – because EVERYTHING important happened here!  And happened here first. 

All roads lead to Needham, my friends.