As a rule I hate looking back. The trouble with looking back is you tend to stare at it a long time, and nothing really good ever comes of that.

I'm also not a big fan of "nostalgia". I think of nostalgia and think "fond remembrance of events that never occurred" - time tends to blow small events out of proportion and large events into heart stopping defining moments which, at the time didn't amount to much.

So why look back at all?

The idea of putting together a site like Newstalgia is to help put history and current events into perspective. Some things never change, some people never change - only the names and situations and outcomes. Sometimes history consists of the same set of events and circumstances over and over until the lesson is learned or the methods changed.

Much of history is a series of repeats: (India/Pakistan war over Kashmir - 1951)

Much of history includes investigations, exhaustive, scathing,combative:

(Senate Crime Committee Hearings headed by Estes Kefauver, 1951)

Some history involves people - in a certain place, in a certain time:

(first general election in Ghana after Independence 1957)

All of these are issues I plan to present, by way of audio, some video and what other documentation I can find from my lifelong collection of news and current events to convey the continuing nature of history - what it did to us then, and what it means to us now. Some things never change and some things are destined never to be the same again.

That's what I'm trying to do. I hope you enjoy the ride.

Gordon Skene - The Gordon Skene Sound Collection

(Algeria, 1957)

Newstalgia