Hi Nortin,
perspectives can be confusing but are one of the major advantages of OF over the competition. For one I recommend reading this article and considering to buy the presented ebook (no, Im not the author ;) ) for a few dollar. I have heard it is worth it, especially if you struggle with perspectives:
http://www.macstories.net/mac/creati...-and-giveaway/
You can very well create a start date perspective, for example by setting both "sort" and "group" to "start date". That gives you a sorted view of tasks, those with a start date first. It gives you groupings like "started within the past 6 months", "started within the past week" etc.