**PSA - Feel free to skip**
I'm a COVID-Era teacher - which essentially means that I (along with several of my fellow teachers) have no life. It also means that I have to find some new ways of breathing greater life into the things that I seek so desperately to offer my students. That is why, this last summer, I decided to travel the state of Utah and provide my students for the coming year with virtual tours of real places that hold particular historical significance. I hope that this will offer something real to them at a time when their realities are, by necessity, limited in scope. I look forward to the day when we can all board a stuffy bus, shoulder to shoulder, and experience the historical scene together. Until then, we compromise.
A note about professionalism: I didn't have time for it. Most of the time I created these videos on the fly, whether it was when I was on a trip for other purposes, out visiting family, taking my sons for an outing, or something else. So I relied mostly on recall in the moment, I didn't bother dressing up or grooming myself incessantly, and I had no time to worry about camera angles or movements. Please forgive the sloppiness and inaccuracy inherent in these posts; just know that I've done what I could in the time allotted me. What's more, I'm an addle-minded buffoon most days. I will attempt to make content corrections that jump out at me when I preview the videos before uploading them, and I will be most grateful for your forgiveness where I am lacking. I've still got plenty to learn. ;)
**This video**
Topaz is one of those historic places that leaves you feeling different than you felt before you arrived. I'm not sure what is more shocking, the realization of what was there or the realization, upon visiting, of what is no longer there. The entire place is so empty - only simple markers and a flag pole distinguish it as a place of importance any more. The level to which it has been wiped from the scene, and only recently acknowledged as a place of historic importance, speaks to the level of cultural shame that the state and country feel in coming to terms with the mistakes of the past. Among the lessons to learn here, perhaps one of them includes the following: we must always be careful not to lose our humanity in order to protect ourselves from the things we fear.
