Is it 2016 or 1620...

   We are just several days into the new year, 2016 that is, but there is something haunting about the year for me. As it is sometimes said, “curiosity killed the cat", and I needed to get a good night's sleep and put my curiosity to rest. Not wanting to become a dead cat,  I decided to take a quick look back to the year 1620. Google searches make that so easy these days. Obviously 1620 was well before my time so I was going to have to rely on the writers and historians of the time for the details and events and as I read through the list of dates and events, I was somewhat surprised by what I found and maybe had forgotten.

   There is an old expression... “what goes around comes around...” and while 1620 is nearly 400 years ago now, some of the issues and events of the day were, in some form or another, not that much different than those of 2016. After all, this is an election year. It almost feels as though the fears and concerns of life in 1620 gets replayed at each of the current Presidential debate, regardless of political party affiliation.

   For example, there were peace treaties being negotiated with the Roman Empire, an empire that once ruled the world.  A new religious migration was taking place in the French North America (Canada) and women were being arrested and tried in court for witchcraft.

   As countries struggled in wars against each other to grow, expand their territory and capture a piece of the world action, it forced family members, bothers and brothers, fathers and sons to go into battle against each other.

   In an effort to escape the turmoil and bloodshed taking place worldwide, a small group of immigrants set sail on September 15^th 1620 from Plymouth, England in search for a new land, a new place to call home, and after spending nearly 2 months at sea, the Mayflower, with 102 pilgrims aboard ship spotted the tip of what we now call Cape Cod. These were immigrants to the new world. And for the next 400 years people from all over the world would come to America in search of  the "American dream."

   In early December, the passengers on board eventually landed at a place they later named Plymouth Rock. But before the day was over, Myles Standish and 18 of the early settlers  were attacked by 30 Native Americans, the attack later becoming known as the First Encounter. And as immigrants from Europe and other parts of the world continued to arrive in the new land searching for a better and friendly place to settle, those attacks and encounters would continue. Sound familiar?

   Irony is often defined as a state of affairs or an event that seems deliberately contrary to what one expects. The irony for me are the dates of 1620 and 2016. In reality, they probably have little in common, except for the numbers 16 and 20. Put in a perspective of time, they are nearly 400 years apart. And yet, the events and attitudes in 1620 seem to have some similarities to 2016. Do some attitudes never change? Do we continue to fight the things we fear most? Were we not all immigrants, pilgrims, to a new life and a new land at one time or another? 
   Oh! One other thing. In early May of 1620, a new invention, the merry-go-round, was first seen at a country fair. Gives new understanding to the expression of "what goes around, comes around." Wouldn't you agree?