I'm currently reading a thick paperback, Eye Witness to History--a compilation of first-person accounts of the sort you can see on this website:
www.eyewitnesstohistory.com
Reading it in bed last night, after thinking during the day about why I blog, I thought, I do not blog for the historical record--something that once might have motivated me.
When I was growing up, I knew that journal writing--even by an everyday person--might end up being of some historical importance.
A note in the Manchester Guardian about birds on the battlefield during WWI, for instance:
"A flock of linnets 'insisted on sitting on a derelict bit of telegraph wire where shells fell continually. They were there day after day.' "
Now I can't imagine how future historians are going to sort through all the as-it-happened accounts of the Internet age.
How many hours are uploaded to youTube every second? I'm not even going to check. A lot.
Of course, probably a lot (most?) of what we're writing and otherwise recording online won't survive.
We already can't access lots of old data from the 20th century--physical film is damaged, technologies to read computer files no longer exist.
I've thought about printing some of this blog out, but... why?
Still, paper is a good bet! There's still plenty of that for future historians.
I haven't written anything on paper in ages. Oh--wait.
Geez-louise, Self!
My nonfiction books for teens are on paper--and they're durably bound for school library use. They could survive a lot.
The fandom one would be a decent starting place, in fact, to look at what we were up to, culturally, in the twenty-teens:
Storytelling!
Whatever form they may take, humans tell stories, that's for sure.
Speaking of stories, I wish I had more of a comic touch, I could use my workplace as material.
Work was bonkers (my latest favorite word) on Thursday. Mr Linens works next to my book-sorting area, and his pile of donated linens had grown so mountainous, he had to dig his work chair out from under before he could even start.
There wasn't room for us to work side-by-side (there usually is), so I took my book cart elsewhere, but elsewhere was overflowing too... I ended up leaving early.
On my way out, a volunteer said to me, "Someone above our pay grade needs to make changes."
I just laughed. Who would that be?
And then I thought, this is material for a comic novel, if only I could spin it that way.
Last week I reread Excellent Women by Barbara Pym for the nth time--one of my favorite novels.
It's very a slight comic novel––or a very profound, even depressing one, depending on how you look at it––about a spinster, Mildred (she's thirty-two), living in London in 1950.
The book shifts each time I read it--one of the things that makes it a favorite. On this reading, I appreciated how Pym catches what a lot of sheer work it is to keep things running.
Mildred is one of the "excellent women" who shoulder the miniature and (in her class and day) unpaid but many and endless burdens of keeping things going:
writing indexes and organizing church jumble sales, for instance.
They seems small, until no one does them.
And now I am off to work--it's Mr Linens's day off, so I should be able to function...
www.eyewitnesstohistory.com
Reading it in bed last night, after thinking during the day about why I blog, I thought, I do not blog for the historical record--something that once might have motivated me.
When I was growing up, I knew that journal writing--even by an everyday person--might end up being of some historical importance.
A note in the Manchester Guardian about birds on the battlefield during WWI, for instance:
"A flock of linnets 'insisted on sitting on a derelict bit of telegraph wire where shells fell continually. They were there day after day.' "
Now I can't imagine how future historians are going to sort through all the as-it-happened accounts of the Internet age.
How many hours are uploaded to youTube every second? I'm not even going to check. A lot.
Of course, probably a lot (most?) of what we're writing and otherwise recording online won't survive.
We already can't access lots of old data from the 20th century--physical film is damaged, technologies to read computer files no longer exist.
I've thought about printing some of this blog out, but... why?
Still, paper is a good bet! There's still plenty of that for future historians.
I haven't written anything on paper in ages. Oh--wait.
Geez-louise, Self!
My nonfiction books for teens are on paper--and they're durably bound for school library use. They could survive a lot.
The fandom one would be a decent starting place, in fact, to look at what we were up to, culturally, in the twenty-teens:
Storytelling!
Whatever form they may take, humans tell stories, that's for sure.
Speaking of stories, I wish I had more of a comic touch, I could use my workplace as material.
Work was bonkers (my latest favorite word) on Thursday. Mr Linens works next to my book-sorting area, and his pile of donated linens had grown so mountainous, he had to dig his work chair out from under before he could even start.
There wasn't room for us to work side-by-side (there usually is), so I took my book cart elsewhere, but elsewhere was overflowing too... I ended up leaving early.
On my way out, a volunteer said to me, "Someone above our pay grade needs to make changes."
I just laughed. Who would that be?
And then I thought, this is material for a comic novel, if only I could spin it that way.
Last week I reread Excellent Women by Barbara Pym for the nth time--one of my favorite novels.
It's very a slight comic novel––or a very profound, even depressing one, depending on how you look at it––about a spinster, Mildred (she's thirty-two), living in London in 1950.
The book shifts each time I read it--one of the things that makes it a favorite. On this reading, I appreciated how Pym catches what a lot of sheer work it is to keep things running.
Mildred is one of the "excellent women" who shoulder the miniature and (in her class and day) unpaid but many and endless burdens of keeping things going:
writing indexes and organizing church jumble sales, for instance.
They seems small, until no one does them.
And now I am off to work--it's Mr Linens's day off, so I should be able to function...
