History Adventuring

I visited the Pioneer Living History Museum a few days ago, which I've done many times, and I always thoroughly enjoy it. It may, or may not be for you, and I'll see if I can explain. First of all, these are real buildings that just got too small for Phoenix, and Prescott, and they were moved to this spot. And that's the key here, that this is real, not a re-creation. And if you're like me, you enjoy seeing something real, and knowing that these buildings were actually in use by Arizonans long before air conditioning was invented (which always blows my mind!). This isn't a backlot, and this isn't Disneyland. And frankly, if I were a kid I probably would find it boring. But as an adult with a fascination with history, especially Arizona history during the Victorian era, I just love it. But if you're really not into that kinda stuff, it will just seem like a place where you "gotta go", like on a field trip, and you'll just be glad to out of there...

I hit that magic time of 2-3 years of experience in my field after getting my degree by 1986, so I decided that it was time to look for a nice corporate job at a big company. I moved to the San Fernando Valley, a suburb area of Los Angeles, and started sending out resumes and going to job interviews. I was lucky because I got a good job, in my field, for one of the biggest employers in the area. And like everything else, luck played into it, I was in the right place at the right time. Even after all these years I'm uncomfortable talking about what was going on, because the people who were doing the hiring at the time were (of course) older than me, and they had lived in a world of prejudice. Prejudice isn't a term that you hear very often nowadays, but it was commonly used in the 1960s and '70s to describe someone who was racist, or bigoted. And it simply meant that people had "pre-judged" someone, in a negative way, based on the color of their skin, or their cult...