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...
Interesting to think that we will have little to remind us of what these days were like. Sorry, but the internet as a historical reference is a little far-fetched to me as who is to say the writings are correct. Journal keeping/logs appear to be so old school to many today.
ReplyDeleteI found my mother's 5 year diary a teenager during WWII with one sentence entries to be fascinating. My grandfather kept diaries of the weather conditions as he got older -- recording the sky, temp, etc, every day.
Kirsten
That's so cool you have your mother's WWII diary, Kirsten!
ReplyDeleteA friend is currently transcribing his grandmother's teenage diaries---all about boys she went out with--and then she got an abortion!
A good reminder that people in the past were not sexless.
And weather! Funny--a volunteer in her late 80s at the store was telling me she has her grandfather's journals.
"What a treasure," I said.
"Well," she said, "not really. He was a farmer and it's mostly about weather."
Ha!
But I bet there are some interesting tidbits about things like birds and bugs too, tucked in here and there.
And daily weather readings are of interest to weather scientists.
Lots of the internet may not be fact-checked, but wouldn't it be amazing to have even a few hours of people's impressions on youTube or Facebook from Rome, 410 A.D., or England, 1348, or Hiroshima, 1945? Etc.
Not necessarily "correct" in terms of fact, but amazing unedited social history!
I agree that having people's impressions of past historical events is gold! Hiroshima is a prime example where we do have those accounts in books and it's why reading about it seared it into my brain. The first person accounts are what make history come alive, and makes me care. I don't know how much of internet will end up being saved...or how its data will be mined, but it's sure to make history more well-rounded in the future (unless censorship and suppression win the day, or the technology fails to be accessible).
ReplyDelete