Week 2 Reading Response

While working on this week’s reading assignment, a few things really stood out to me because of their relevance to us as students in this field.

On page 50 of Nearby History by Kyvig and Marty, the concept of selecting historical traces is really put into perspective. “Selecting historical traces for their authenticity, reliability, accuracy, credibility, and usefulness in relation to the topic under consideration is the most important task one faces after choosing a topic for research.” This is something I think is very relevant to where we all are at in our lives. We are students, we are learners, we are researchers. I think this is important to take note of because we can often get caught up in the historical trace just because it is historical and excites us, when we need to be focusing on what about that historical item makes it important to the task at hand- our research.

The book Native Seattle by Thrush is very intriguing to me. I was raised on the Kitsap Peninsula, across the Puget Sound from Seattle. This book is in part a refresher to me because we were taught much of the local history through grade school. One concept that seems to be repeated throughout the local history is the idea of the drastic life changes that occurred as European settlers moved into the coastal areas local to us. “Both peoples had their ‘world views’ enlarged by this encounter—each borrowed diet and dress, tools, techniques, and terminology from the other” (page 20). This reminds me of the name of the town I was raised in—Olalla, which means “place of many berries” from the native Chinook word “olallie.”

Seattle Ghost Signs--Pioneer Square: "Washington State Ferries". Courtesy of "Seattle Ghost Signs" on Facebook.com