Saturday, February 05, 2005
Finer focus
I'm still struggling with the balancing of priorities.
In the areas of history, I've been aiming toward current events, using the print version of Facts on File as source material. This lags current events about a month, but is reasonably comprehensive. I'm taking one week at a time and going backward in time. Each page of my notes starts with a very broad, general outline. Each time I go back to that page, I add a little bit more detail, depending on which areas I judge most important to it.
In areas I call sociology, the most detailed areas of focus are successively peoples of the world, Western civilization, english speaking peoples, North America, the United States, the Northern states, the northeast, and West Virginia in particular. In the process, I need to give some attention to neighboring cultural areas. These are connected to history. One of my goals is to connect sufficiently fine detail in history with sufficiently fine detail in place, such as Monongalia County in the past week.
Connected to this is work on institutions. Although I am very much interested in religion, there isn't as much public information available on it in historical or other sources. Government and political affairs are more easily traced, and so far these aren't as finely broken down as the other areas I've mentioned.
But I'm getting a bit closer to where I can start applying this better.
In the areas of history, I've been aiming toward current events, using the print version of Facts on File as source material. This lags current events about a month, but is reasonably comprehensive. I'm taking one week at a time and going backward in time. Each page of my notes starts with a very broad, general outline. Each time I go back to that page, I add a little bit more detail, depending on which areas I judge most important to it.
In areas I call sociology, the most detailed areas of focus are successively peoples of the world, Western civilization, english speaking peoples, North America, the United States, the Northern states, the northeast, and West Virginia in particular. In the process, I need to give some attention to neighboring cultural areas. These are connected to history. One of my goals is to connect sufficiently fine detail in history with sufficiently fine detail in place, such as Monongalia County in the past week.
Connected to this is work on institutions. Although I am very much interested in religion, there isn't as much public information available on it in historical or other sources. Government and political affairs are more easily traced, and so far these aren't as finely broken down as the other areas I've mentioned.
But I'm getting a bit closer to where I can start applying this better.
