Old books, papers and photographs. That is what I used to see at my grandparents' home. Occasionally one would be taken down and shown to me. An explanation was given. This is what this is, or this is who that person was. Mostly it was the latter, who that person was. They were usually deceased! As a kid I would look at them and think it was a little creepy. In those photographs those folks were seldom smiling, as was the custom back in the day. The pictures were always black and white, posed and stiff. The thing is, and I wasn't aware of that at the time, the pictures were lifeless. It is something I have come to understand. If you never knew the person, saw them when living, a picture doesn't bring them to life. What that picture does is bring alive is a memory.
Today I look around my home and what do I see? Old books, papers and photographs. They will be the things left behind, the objects whose fate will be decided upon. I do my best to make them familiar to my children and grandchildren in the hope they will continue on. When I think about it I have amazingly little from my parents home to remind me of that time. Perhaps that was the result of me having joined the Navy. While I was in the service my parents sold our home and everything had to be moved out. A great deal of that ephemera was lost at that time, especially the things that were mine. To my parents there were just objects, stuff or junk. To me some of that stuff stored memories, memories discarded now. Well, you can't keep it all can you. No, and you can't take it with you either.
Today much of what I have is stored on a computer or some form of storage device. Literally hundreds of photographs, a good number of videos, and all sorts of files. Very little of what I have is protected by passwords and could be accessed easily enough by anyone. I'm thinking the only challenge in the future will be in knowing what to use to open those files. Compact discs are slowly fading away and I have a good deal of stuff stored on them. SC cards and flash drives also hold a great deal. Will those in the future understand the technology needed to open them? I'm certain they will be able to if the interest is great enough but that's the real issue, the interest. Would you buy a record player to play a single record? I have already purchased some equipment like a cassette player because I wanted to transfer that information to a digital format. But I knew what was on that tape, I knew I wanted to save it, had it been some random tape I wouldn't have done that, then it is just trash.
I do have some things I have written by hand in books. Yes, actual handwritten documents. They are getting to be a rarity if you think about that. The best you can hope for today is a real signature. But, even now, you can digitally sign some documents and that is as legal as doing it in person. Imagine if the founding fathers had simply digitally signed the Declaration of Independence. It sure wouldn't seem as personal as it does today. I have a few, a precious few in fact, cards, letters or even examples of my parents handwriting. I have nothing that they ever wrote directly to me as I discarded the letters my mom would write to me while I was in the service. I haven't saved any cards either. I do have a postcard written by my grandmother to her father. Every time I look at it, I feel a close personal connection although she passed long before my birth. I did know her father and from that card know she called him papa. I have a photograph of her when she graduated from grammar school. That was in 1912. Her life was half over at that point as she passed at age 24, after giving birth to my dad. That little postcard with her handwriting upon it survives.
Ephemera or communication from the past? Isn't that the point of old books, papers and photographs. The caveman scratching at the walls was hoping just for that. The desire was to leave a record. All we can do is speculate about that; we really don't know the motivation behind all that. Eventually man devised a method to write it down, to convey what their thoughts and feelings were to others. To pass information down through the ages was certainly one motivation. The desire being to make it a little easier for the next generation, to make it easier for their children and grandchildren. It most likely began with family stories around a fire. I expect much information was closely guarded as well. Information is power. And now we are told we are living in the information age. All information readily available to anyone at anytime, anywhere. The internet making the great library of Alexander seem insignificant in comparison. The only regrets we have about that is what information was lost, the unknown.
I think that is what all of us want to avoid, the loss of information. I often put that as, being forgotten. We all want to be remembered. What we want remembered is the information we shared while we were here. That's the connection to the past that is most binding. There are times when I am conscious of that, when I realize I was taught this by my father, my brother or someone else. It's my hope that one day someone will say that about me. I learned that from my dad, my brother or this guy named Ben. That is how I want to be remembered. This is what he did, and this is what I learned from that. I began writing some of my blogs in a notebook, in cursive, for my grandchildren to have. I do believe handwritten documents of any type will be saved more readily than any printed material. The only question being, will they be able to read it. My cursive writing does somewhat resemble hieroglyphs more than the English language. But I tell myself that will be the charm in it. What is this book Dad? Well, that was written by your great grandfather in some secret code that has never been cracked. One day technology will be developed to decipher it.
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