13 days left and we’re just shy of 50% of our goal. I’ll admit, it’s been a nail-biter and cause for sleepless nights and a lot of Pepcid-AC. I have been relentlessly hounding you all since the beginning of February. I’m sure you’re sick of hearing me yammer on over you how important this all is. Those of you who have chipped in so far, you know it’s preaching to the choir. And those of you who haven’t chipped in may wonder why I’m making such a big deal out of history and music and popular culture.
It’s that well-worn cliche about insanity being defined as “doing the same thing over and over, expecting different results”. A lot of history is like that – a lot of what’s going on in the world now is like that. Sadly, we are often not reminded that what we’re going through now is something we’ve gone through years or even generations before. Sometimes its amnesia – many times it’s intentional.
Here’s the problem – Mainstream Media has let all of us down. The reason; News and Public Affairs and in-depth reporting on issues and events is treated as an entertainment and not a necessity. It has been determined (by who, I have no idea, but I can speculate, as can you) that you have overdosed on bad news. And so your daily diet of current events and information must be of an entertaining variety. Our reporters are Show People. Our stories are fluff. When serious events are covered, they are presented in a way which begs a sense of hysteria. How can you trust a news Anchor when they are falling apart on camera?
But it wasn’t always that way. And believe me, I am not doing Past Daily as a way of “wallowing in the good old days”. Life has always been a scary proposition – but it used to be that it was better you knew what was going on than be distracted from it. I am trying to present history to you in a way which lets you know it’s happened before, we got through it and we learned something from it as a result.
And I have this archive of news and events and history to back all that up. There’s a lot of it; almost a million hours worth. A collection of history going back to the 1890s which got its start in 1963. And I am preserving it and making it available to you – to listen to, learn from and share.
It’s as simple as that. And right now I’m at a crisis point. The cost of housing all this material has shot up dramatically since the start of the year. The cost of running this website has increased several times over. The amount of physical work I do on this site has quadrupled since I began Past Daily three years ago.
And so I am turning to you for your help and asking for your support during this crisis. I am asking for your tax-deductible contributions, in whatever amount you’re comfortable with, in order to help me over this crunch and to get back to giving you all the information, history and culture I can.
I love doing this (the site, not the hounding). It was never my intention to start a website or even amass an archive. I have always been curious about life – about why things are and where things go. And collecting historic sounds was a hobby, something that appealed to my curiosity.
The longer I am on the planet, the more I realize much of what it’s all about is giving back. Giving back experience, giving back knowledge, giving back discoveries. I realized there was no point in having all this “stuff” and not sharing it with anyone, not making it available, not using it to point out the similarities rather than the differences over who we are as a society.
In my roundabout way, it’s an attempt at being part of the solution, and not the problem. I sincerely believe its better for you to know about things through historic precedence than pretend they never happened before.
So that’s why I’m here – that’s why I do this site 14 hours a day and that’s why I’m asking for your help.
There’s the link below. Please click on it and make your pledge; your contribution in whatever amount you’re comfortable with. And if you can’t, and believe me, I know the economy is rotten at the moment, if you can’t and want to help, please tell your friends. I need all of you and I need your support before it’s too late. 13 days to go and we can get through this. I have this cautious optimism that we can.
Till next time . . .
Gordon Skene
