I have never thought of preserving people’s existence through records, although I suppose it explains the urge to write. To not be lost. I love the idea of giving dignity to the people of the past even simply by remembering their existence. I have a lot of grief around knowing nothing of my own ancestors. So much to think about in this piece--I’m so glad you wrote it.
I love the archivists spin…and the really noble work of remembering people who didn’t have the time or space to make a record of themselves. And even those who did—the witnessing of the record is part of the life it leaves behind.
Thank you!!! I won’t pretend that there aren’t moments of extreme boredom in my line of work. But I sooo believe its importance and I know my access to these stories is an insane privilege.
Honoring the warriors who fought for our freedom; happy and thankful now that we have toilets and cars, I think we live like kings and queens, we have wisdom at our fingertips, we have daily harvest at whole foods and we have the freedom to take our minds wherever it pleases. With that is a moment to moment realization of it and not wasting it. 🫶
Kimia, thank you! I think you are right...they are with us whether we know it or not. But there's something so unique about being able to hold things from the past. I have my grandmothers cat-eyed glasses that she wore as a child - so old and little. I feel like I have a part of her from a time that I know so little about...
I love how much I can feel your history through your writing.
You’ve outdone yourself this time Caroline! That was an awesome post... I’ve been moving around a ceramic swan, my mother, and perhaps my grandmother owned before her. The plant goes back many generations, and clippings have been shared throughout the family. It’s really the only thing I’m concerned about when I move house.
Our history is what we are! All the poets and chefs culminated into you. I think they are proud of us. We contain all of their strength and creativity. Is this too woo woo? Try closing your eyes and talk to your ancestor and you'd be surprised. 🫶
Such a great point, just looking at old photos that survived is already special. I wish more survived from my family, but a lot was destroyed by bollsheviks
Wonderful Caroline! A large part of my motivation to write is to leave a record behind. You remind me that a project for the New Year is to print out and assemble my posts in hard copy, just as a backup.
And I know from how much I value the very limited writings I have from departed older generations that I will leave a valuable legacy of permanence for the future.
I love how you describe resurrecting those who have departed from your life by the physical evidence of their having been present.
Thank you so much, David!! Yes! Print our your writings. I think that is a great and such a wonderful memento to leave behind for those who hold you dear.
I think Thay would appreciate this. Impermanence is essential to the truths of reality, but just as important to Buddhism, as he also taught and re popularized, is the idea of “Inter-being,” which says that the idea of an independent self or object existing is a fiction, since everything relates to and depends on its existence via innumerable other things. Since he was a tireless advocate for the dispossessed through the Vietnam war and then many other places, he probably understood well the importance of records, memories, photos, etc. on our collective (interwoven) experience and existence. I love his memoir, Fragrant Palm Leaves, because it involves his thoughts from difficult times before he was kicked out of Vietnam, as well as his times there trying to build a commune in the forest with some of his friends. He also talks about working in France to process refugees and concentrating intently on the photo of each child in the application before he started reading it, and then feeling that he understood them well enough to proceed.
Nick, thank you for this wonderful comment. I’m still working my way through his teachings- some click instantly, while others require more introspection. But it’s a good journey.
Great! I also just started my substack, I’ll be writing about some of these concepts as it embeds into my way of life and travel experiences, take a look if you like.
At the moment I'm reading The Book at War, and one of the things it says, and which for some reason I hadn't realised, is that when the Nazis burned the Jewish holy books and scrolls from synagogues, they forced the local Jews to watch. I can't describe how awful I think that is. It's like a double punishment.
On a completely different level, I'm currently going through a recently deceased relative's effects, and it struck me that people's lives are embedded in minutae. Things like a note scrawled: "Pay the newsagent". Suddenly, none of those things matter, but they're a proof that here was a real life.
It makes my skin crawl, thinking about that...watching yourself be erased in real time. Thank you for the book recommendation and stopping by here, Terry. It means a lot!
I got an account at the LDS website and filled in a few generations several years back. I check in from time to time and find the family tree growing bigger and bigger. I know it’s a doctrinal exercise for the LDS, but for non-members like me, it’s fascinating. I’ll follow a branch back until I eventually find a King Larry of Pinehurst Avenue kinds of royalty. Old photos of people and gravesites magically appear and make the people real. It feels like a giant funnel of history and genes that resulted in me.
One of the ancestors with my surname was the collector of customs for the Port of Baltimore in the late 1700s and was also the leader of the local militia who marched from Baltimore down the east side of the Inner Harbor during the bombardment of Fort McHenry (Oh Say Can You See) and fought the British marines at Sparrow’s Point.
I don’t remember how or why I discovered it, but I found a customs receipt from the Port of Baltimore sign by my ancestor and dated 17 August, 1792 in the amount of $1784.72, a very large sum then, “for drawbacks on merchandise exported.” It’s hanging on my office wall and when I look at it, the past feels very tangible and very real.
I live in a meadow that was homesteaded in 1914 by a family who arrived straight from Scotland. Not much remains from their years here except for memories that until recently were stored in the vault-like mind of my old guy who will celebrate his 93rd birthday on Pi Day.
I carefully record every memory scrap of the family as he drops them like trail markers to an unknown time and place. I know the family by name now, and know one son is buried in a military cemetery near Manila. I also know that another son worked for a construction company that was building army airfields on US possessions in the Pacific and was on Wake Island after Pearl Harbor was attacked. Wake Island was attacked not long after and the 900 civilian construction workers helped the Marines defend the island until they ran out of almost everything. That son spent the remainder of the war in a Japanese prisoner of war camp in the Philippines, but ultimately survived.
The more I listen, study, and explore here, the richer the past becomes, and often serendipitously. My kids’ grandfather built them a heavy duty swing set maybe thirty years ago, and I remember when one of the kids showed me a “funny” rock he found while dragging his feet back and forth while swinging. The funny rock was an obsidian spearhead that hinted at more distant inhabitants.
Some past residents leave memorials in other ways. In the river not far from our house are the nearly buried remains of two red Farmall tractors. They are still visible at this time of the year when the water in the river is low. The owner of the tractors reversed the rear blade and push snow off his road and over a cliff into the river. One his first wild tractor ride, he got too close to the edge of the cliff and the tractor dropped like a rock into the river, but not before the driver bailed out at the last moment. Apparently he was not one to learn from his mistakes, so he bought another Farmall tractor, reversed the blade and pushed the snow in reverse over the cliff like before. Unfortunately, the next time he got too close to the edge, he rode the tractor into the river and died.
Those two river tractors are excellent reminders that those who fail to learn from history are destined to repeat it.
On a happier note, we have a rhubarb plant in our garden that we transplanted from an old homestead a couple miles up the river. According to my old guy, the last family moved from the old house in the early 1950s. The rhubarb plant grew next to the front porch, and since no one plants rhubarb just before they abandon their farm, the plant easily could be from the 1940s. Every spring, it sheds its old leaves and grows new ones. It’s only a little younger than my old guy.
My meadow and surrounding environs are full of artifacts and memories of earlier times here and I feel a responsibility to collect the stories. One of the benefits I receive is a sense of living in a larger community that grows more anonymous each year unless I tend the memories. It’s a good vocation form me because after so many years of rootlessness, I find myself becoming more attached to a continuum in which I am merely a part of the historical arc of transitions.
I really appreciated William Least Heat Moon’s book PrairiErth, about a deep dive into the history and culture of a single Midwest county. After a lifetime of traveling extensively (“all travel is superficial,” a guy once told me), digging deeply where I live is captivating.
Life was simpler and easier to take pleasure in, some generations back. That can be a nostalgic moment, but through a story, since we didn't live back then. Then if you go further back, the western heritage was full of war. Really Europe and Christianity was racked by it for 1,000 years, more, (since Rome). Some comments here say that all of our history is "in our bones", in our unconsciousness. I don't know, but it is worth looking to see what could pop up, that we now think we have passed through.
So do the oldsters have all the wisdom? Then read the bible, they are really the oldsters. But the bible was foundation for all of the turmoil. I THINK WE NEED A NEW WISDOM.
I think the heart is just open to feel into all of our explanations. It has no "druthers" for itself. It is our explanations, which are our adopted beliefs, and the fears they produce as we affirm them. For the adult, (that's reading this), all of these fears are rooted in the words we use to excuse our blindness. We know only the uneasy feeling, but not its source.
Feelings are meant to be our guide. Intellect and rationality are meant to be the moderation of those feelings. (I feel like I should "teach you a lesson", but my intellect says my objectives are not to descend into mutual retribution.)
The pathway is easy. Every time you have a feeling, monitor your self-talk. What am I telling myself here? Maybe you like it; maybe it needs an update.
I love this so much Caroline. I have just started appreciating, really appreciating history, so this really speaks to me. To be reduced to memory, to scraps of photos, letters and records is tragedy enough, to be completely forgotten, especially those who’ve suffered, is truly tragic. Thank you for this moment in time to reflect on impermanence. Maybe the only thing we really leave behind is the impact we make on others. 🤍
Thank you for this excellent post. It worries me that we will leave so little behind - much will be swallowed by the digital dark hole. It is amazing and important work to trace our ancestors, and make sure the truthful story is told. But we also need to leave our stories for future generations.
Thank you so much, Kate! I worry about us especially today when so much of our records are digital and how quickly digital formats become obsolete...will they be able to access what we leave behind?!
I know, I think it is a huge problem. People are aware of the benefits of digital but unaware of the consequences of keeping everything digital long term. Even today some photo storage companies have shut down.
be hard getting long without you for 2 weeks but sooooo glad it aint uhmmmmm "permanent" ha!!! in wanting us and our breadcrumbs there is so much generosity here to spare like a landscape ( Smokeys?) it beckons, this spirit, unfolding unknowable
Haha thanks, Apple. I don’t know that I’ll have time to get anything down while my mom is dragging me around town. Taking a break for both our sakes. Thank you for being here, always!
Awwww. I have had some health challenges that have been, well, challenging and I'm still working on them. No answers so far but will keep at it. :-). What else is there to do? I'm not the giving up type! LOL
Elizabeth, I don’t know you, but I almost made a similar comment. I know that nature will survive, adapt, and thrive whether we are here or not. But at least now in the digital age I think everything online will surely be as close to permanence as possible--it is based in mathematics. Sorry Caroline, I owe you that story about my near death experience and/with mathematics...one day...lol
Hi Sea (probably not your real name? :-). I think because it is online it won't be permanent at all. If electricity goes, so does everything else. Poof. Gone in a split second. And I don't think nature will survive, adapt and thrive. We're messing things up too quickly for them to adapt, we've poisoned their environment so badly so far that there's no way they will ever thrive again and well, I'm not even sure WE will survive. Even if we do, I don't know that many people who are thriving anymore...at least in the US.
An optimist, eh? Ha ha. I believe nature can survive anything, it’s in its nature. I doubt very seriously that we will. (If I ever get off my ass and finish my story “what’s in a name?“ We’ll get around to mine..) And you’re right about the US, I’m making my plans to go back to Europe. At least I’ll be around my daughter—and among people who have a real appreciation for music, and don’t just want to hear cover songs! I like your candid spirit. I feel like we could have some very interesting conversations? After I finish posting 52 originals, I don’t know what I’ll do. But I like to email, as no one writes handwritten letters anymore—my favorite.
You dwell on a presumed story of destroyed archives, and the feeling goes along with it. Is that a crowd-sourced emotion? Maybe we already have enough of raw feeling? If that feeling is part of the quarter-life-crisis, please note you are generating it.
I have recently studied ancient history, and everything about Kievan RUS, from 800 AD to 1,400 AD is freely out there. Kiev was the most powerful of three Russian centers, but at the end of all the wars, Moscow came out on top. (Really, nothing in those times was worth remembering, since we rarely learn by our mistakes.)
The part I take issue with is called the Holodomor 1932. It is easy enough to research that in that year there was an equal or greater famine in the Volga basin. So it WAS a real famine, in which millions of Russians died. Hey, the Ukrainian deaths were half Russian too. Whatever political moves were on top of that famine, I don't know.
Surely, the works of Gwendolyn Midlo Hall are commendable. By focusing on the individuals she uncovered the momentum of the slavery movement. It is too easy to sweep under the rug, when all remain nameless. I don't believe this nor other American atrocities will be picked up by the American Main Stream. Nobody wants it. The belief is, now we are civilized. The past has been disconnected from the present. It's a fantasy, I agree.
I think life has to be a balance between what we remember, and what we are willing to engage with now. Possible engagements do seem to be diminishing, at least the ones that could possibly make a difference. So collective memory is valuable in as much as it facilitates the present.
I just read on another site; New Zealand is making untold efforts to erase their "guilt" about the Maoris. And there surely was a lot of guilt, as in all of the British empires. But has it tipped too far into over-compensation? Well, they must feel a lot of guilt?
I have never thought of preserving people’s existence through records, although I suppose it explains the urge to write. To not be lost. I love the idea of giving dignity to the people of the past even simply by remembering their existence. I have a lot of grief around knowing nothing of my own ancestors. So much to think about in this piece--I’m so glad you wrote it.
You, your deep love for your family, gorgeous baby Bruce - alive forever through your writings. What a blessing!! ❤️
I love the archivists spin…and the really noble work of remembering people who didn’t have the time or space to make a record of themselves. And even those who did—the witnessing of the record is part of the life it leaves behind.
Thank you!!! I won’t pretend that there aren’t moments of extreme boredom in my line of work. But I sooo believe its importance and I know my access to these stories is an insane privilege.
Honoring the warriors who fought for our freedom; happy and thankful now that we have toilets and cars, I think we live like kings and queens, we have wisdom at our fingertips, we have daily harvest at whole foods and we have the freedom to take our minds wherever it pleases. With that is a moment to moment realization of it and not wasting it. 🫶
Kimia, thank you! I think you are right...they are with us whether we know it or not. But there's something so unique about being able to hold things from the past. I have my grandmothers cat-eyed glasses that she wore as a child - so old and little. I feel like I have a part of her from a time that I know so little about...
I love how much I can feel your history through your writing.
I’m so happy we have these material things 🤍
You’ve outdone yourself this time Caroline! That was an awesome post... I’ve been moving around a ceramic swan, my mother, and perhaps my grandmother owned before her. The plant goes back many generations, and clippings have been shared throughout the family. It’s really the only thing I’m concerned about when I move house.
Thank you so...and I love how you have and care for these things. I’m grateful 🤍
Our history is what we are! All the poets and chefs culminated into you. I think they are proud of us. We contain all of their strength and creativity. Is this too woo woo? Try closing your eyes and talk to your ancestor and you'd be surprised. 🫶
Such a great point, just looking at old photos that survived is already special. I wish more survived from my family, but a lot was destroyed by bollsheviks
Thank you, Alexander, for highlighting how this has impacted your family. Things lost that we will never know existed. I’m grateful for you.
I’m grateful for you as well, thanks for the lovely post, a great reminder.
Wonderful Caroline! A large part of my motivation to write is to leave a record behind. You remind me that a project for the New Year is to print out and assemble my posts in hard copy, just as a backup.
And I know from how much I value the very limited writings I have from departed older generations that I will leave a valuable legacy of permanence for the future.
I love how you describe resurrecting those who have departed from your life by the physical evidence of their having been present.
Thank you so much, David!! Yes! Print our your writings. I think that is a great and such a wonderful memento to leave behind for those who hold you dear.
These meaningful connections on substack is recorded etherically; strengthening humanity. ❤️ happy to be here 🫶
I love you all!!
what a nice, relevant piece in keeping with the mood of the holidays. By the way, very impressed that you studied history.
Thank you so much, Rosana!!
I think Thay would appreciate this. Impermanence is essential to the truths of reality, but just as important to Buddhism, as he also taught and re popularized, is the idea of “Inter-being,” which says that the idea of an independent self or object existing is a fiction, since everything relates to and depends on its existence via innumerable other things. Since he was a tireless advocate for the dispossessed through the Vietnam war and then many other places, he probably understood well the importance of records, memories, photos, etc. on our collective (interwoven) experience and existence. I love his memoir, Fragrant Palm Leaves, because it involves his thoughts from difficult times before he was kicked out of Vietnam, as well as his times there trying to build a commune in the forest with some of his friends. He also talks about working in France to process refugees and concentrating intently on the photo of each child in the application before he started reading it, and then feeling that he understood them well enough to proceed.
Nick, thank you for this wonderful comment. I’m still working my way through his teachings- some click instantly, while others require more introspection. But it’s a good journey.
I’m going to order his memoir today 🤍
Great! I also just started my substack, I’ll be writing about some of these concepts as it embeds into my way of life and travel experiences, take a look if you like.
Good read. Thank you Caroline. I just discovered you day when I was having a day.
Thank you so! I’m glad you are here!!
At the moment I'm reading The Book at War, and one of the things it says, and which for some reason I hadn't realised, is that when the Nazis burned the Jewish holy books and scrolls from synagogues, they forced the local Jews to watch. I can't describe how awful I think that is. It's like a double punishment.
On a completely different level, I'm currently going through a recently deceased relative's effects, and it struck me that people's lives are embedded in minutae. Things like a note scrawled: "Pay the newsagent". Suddenly, none of those things matter, but they're a proof that here was a real life.
It makes my skin crawl, thinking about that...watching yourself be erased in real time. Thank you for the book recommendation and stopping by here, Terry. It means a lot!
I got an account at the LDS website and filled in a few generations several years back. I check in from time to time and find the family tree growing bigger and bigger. I know it’s a doctrinal exercise for the LDS, but for non-members like me, it’s fascinating. I’ll follow a branch back until I eventually find a King Larry of Pinehurst Avenue kinds of royalty. Old photos of people and gravesites magically appear and make the people real. It feels like a giant funnel of history and genes that resulted in me.
One of the ancestors with my surname was the collector of customs for the Port of Baltimore in the late 1700s and was also the leader of the local militia who marched from Baltimore down the east side of the Inner Harbor during the bombardment of Fort McHenry (Oh Say Can You See) and fought the British marines at Sparrow’s Point.
I don’t remember how or why I discovered it, but I found a customs receipt from the Port of Baltimore sign by my ancestor and dated 17 August, 1792 in the amount of $1784.72, a very large sum then, “for drawbacks on merchandise exported.” It’s hanging on my office wall and when I look at it, the past feels very tangible and very real.
That is such a cool record to have. A great find!!
I live in a meadow that was homesteaded in 1914 by a family who arrived straight from Scotland. Not much remains from their years here except for memories that until recently were stored in the vault-like mind of my old guy who will celebrate his 93rd birthday on Pi Day.
I carefully record every memory scrap of the family as he drops them like trail markers to an unknown time and place. I know the family by name now, and know one son is buried in a military cemetery near Manila. I also know that another son worked for a construction company that was building army airfields on US possessions in the Pacific and was on Wake Island after Pearl Harbor was attacked. Wake Island was attacked not long after and the 900 civilian construction workers helped the Marines defend the island until they ran out of almost everything. That son spent the remainder of the war in a Japanese prisoner of war camp in the Philippines, but ultimately survived.
The more I listen, study, and explore here, the richer the past becomes, and often serendipitously. My kids’ grandfather built them a heavy duty swing set maybe thirty years ago, and I remember when one of the kids showed me a “funny” rock he found while dragging his feet back and forth while swinging. The funny rock was an obsidian spearhead that hinted at more distant inhabitants.
Some past residents leave memorials in other ways. In the river not far from our house are the nearly buried remains of two red Farmall tractors. They are still visible at this time of the year when the water in the river is low. The owner of the tractors reversed the rear blade and push snow off his road and over a cliff into the river. One his first wild tractor ride, he got too close to the edge of the cliff and the tractor dropped like a rock into the river, but not before the driver bailed out at the last moment. Apparently he was not one to learn from his mistakes, so he bought another Farmall tractor, reversed the blade and pushed the snow in reverse over the cliff like before. Unfortunately, the next time he got too close to the edge, he rode the tractor into the river and died.
Those two river tractors are excellent reminders that those who fail to learn from history are destined to repeat it.
On a happier note, we have a rhubarb plant in our garden that we transplanted from an old homestead a couple miles up the river. According to my old guy, the last family moved from the old house in the early 1950s. The rhubarb plant grew next to the front porch, and since no one plants rhubarb just before they abandon their farm, the plant easily could be from the 1940s. Every spring, it sheds its old leaves and grows new ones. It’s only a little younger than my old guy.
My meadow and surrounding environs are full of artifacts and memories of earlier times here and I feel a responsibility to collect the stories. One of the benefits I receive is a sense of living in a larger community that grows more anonymous each year unless I tend the memories. It’s a good vocation form me because after so many years of rootlessness, I find myself becoming more attached to a continuum in which I am merely a part of the historical arc of transitions.
A place with such more history!! What a gift. Thank you for sharing your experiences, it sounds amazing!
I really appreciated William Least Heat Moon’s book PrairiErth, about a deep dive into the history and culture of a single Midwest county. After a lifetime of traveling extensively (“all travel is superficial,” a guy once told me), digging deeply where I live is captivating.
I’ll take a look!
Life was simpler and easier to take pleasure in, some generations back. That can be a nostalgic moment, but through a story, since we didn't live back then. Then if you go further back, the western heritage was full of war. Really Europe and Christianity was racked by it for 1,000 years, more, (since Rome). Some comments here say that all of our history is "in our bones", in our unconsciousness. I don't know, but it is worth looking to see what could pop up, that we now think we have passed through.
So do the oldsters have all the wisdom? Then read the bible, they are really the oldsters. But the bible was foundation for all of the turmoil. I THINK WE NEED A NEW WISDOM.
.
Maybe the human heart is the foundation of all the turmoil, just as it is the source of goodness, joy, and peace. We always have those choices.
I think the heart is just open to feel into all of our explanations. It has no "druthers" for itself. It is our explanations, which are our adopted beliefs, and the fears they produce as we affirm them. For the adult, (that's reading this), all of these fears are rooted in the words we use to excuse our blindness. We know only the uneasy feeling, but not its source.
Feelings are meant to be our guide. Intellect and rationality are meant to be the moderation of those feelings. (I feel like I should "teach you a lesson", but my intellect says my objectives are not to descend into mutual retribution.)
The pathway is easy. Every time you have a feeling, monitor your self-talk. What am I telling myself here? Maybe you like it; maybe it needs an update.
.
This gave me chills! Your work is fascinating. Thank you for sharing it with us!
Thank you, my friend 🤍
I love this so much Caroline. I have just started appreciating, really appreciating history, so this really speaks to me. To be reduced to memory, to scraps of photos, letters and records is tragedy enough, to be completely forgotten, especially those who’ve suffered, is truly tragic. Thank you for this moment in time to reflect on impermanence. Maybe the only thing we really leave behind is the impact we make on others. 🤍
Ahh yes, like the Maya Angelo quote about people never forgetting how you made them feel - there’s two sides to that.
Happy you’re aboard the history train. I can always use another to nerd out with. Thank you 😊
Thank you for this excellent post. It worries me that we will leave so little behind - much will be swallowed by the digital dark hole. It is amazing and important work to trace our ancestors, and make sure the truthful story is told. But we also need to leave our stories for future generations.
Thank you so much, Kate! I worry about us especially today when so much of our records are digital and how quickly digital formats become obsolete...will they be able to access what we leave behind?!
I know, I think it is a huge problem. People are aware of the benefits of digital but unaware of the consequences of keeping everything digital long term. Even today some photo storage companies have shut down.
be hard getting long without you for 2 weeks but sooooo glad it aint uhmmmmm "permanent" ha!!! in wanting us and our breadcrumbs there is so much generosity here to spare like a landscape ( Smokeys?) it beckons, this spirit, unfolding unknowable
Haha thanks, Apple. I don’t know that I’ll have time to get anything down while my mom is dragging me around town. Taking a break for both our sakes. Thank you for being here, always!
This gave me chills. In a good way!
Ahh Alexandra, thank you 😊
But why should the preservation of human life be our top priority?
Because we’re impermanent 😭
Not a good enough reason. Everything is. We make too big a deal about ourselves. 😘
Haha me especially on the long nights when my brain won’t switch off! I’m happy you’re here, I’ve missed your presence.
Awwww. I have had some health challenges that have been, well, challenging and I'm still working on them. No answers so far but will keep at it. :-). What else is there to do? I'm not the giving up type! LOL
Elizabeth, I don’t know you, but I almost made a similar comment. I know that nature will survive, adapt, and thrive whether we are here or not. But at least now in the digital age I think everything online will surely be as close to permanence as possible--it is based in mathematics. Sorry Caroline, I owe you that story about my near death experience and/with mathematics...one day...lol
Hi Sea (probably not your real name? :-). I think because it is online it won't be permanent at all. If electricity goes, so does everything else. Poof. Gone in a split second. And I don't think nature will survive, adapt and thrive. We're messing things up too quickly for them to adapt, we've poisoned their environment so badly so far that there's no way they will ever thrive again and well, I'm not even sure WE will survive. Even if we do, I don't know that many people who are thriving anymore...at least in the US.
An optimist, eh? Ha ha. I believe nature can survive anything, it’s in its nature. I doubt very seriously that we will. (If I ever get off my ass and finish my story “what’s in a name?“ We’ll get around to mine..) And you’re right about the US, I’m making my plans to go back to Europe. At least I’ll be around my daughter—and among people who have a real appreciation for music, and don’t just want to hear cover songs! I like your candid spirit. I feel like we could have some very interesting conversations? After I finish posting 52 originals, I don’t know what I’ll do. But I like to email, as no one writes handwritten letters anymore—my favorite.
I live writing letters! My email is elisabethdonati@gmail.com
You dwell on a presumed story of destroyed archives, and the feeling goes along with it. Is that a crowd-sourced emotion? Maybe we already have enough of raw feeling? If that feeling is part of the quarter-life-crisis, please note you are generating it.
I have recently studied ancient history, and everything about Kievan RUS, from 800 AD to 1,400 AD is freely out there. Kiev was the most powerful of three Russian centers, but at the end of all the wars, Moscow came out on top. (Really, nothing in those times was worth remembering, since we rarely learn by our mistakes.)
This link will tell you a lot about the Ukraine: https://www.history.com/news/ukraine-timeline-invasions
The part I take issue with is called the Holodomor 1932. It is easy enough to research that in that year there was an equal or greater famine in the Volga basin. So it WAS a real famine, in which millions of Russians died. Hey, the Ukrainian deaths were half Russian too. Whatever political moves were on top of that famine, I don't know.
Surely, the works of Gwendolyn Midlo Hall are commendable. By focusing on the individuals she uncovered the momentum of the slavery movement. It is too easy to sweep under the rug, when all remain nameless. I don't believe this nor other American atrocities will be picked up by the American Main Stream. Nobody wants it. The belief is, now we are civilized. The past has been disconnected from the present. It's a fantasy, I agree.
I think life has to be a balance between what we remember, and what we are willing to engage with now. Possible engagements do seem to be diminishing, at least the ones that could possibly make a difference. So collective memory is valuable in as much as it facilitates the present.
I just read on another site; New Zealand is making untold efforts to erase their "guilt" about the Maoris. And there surely was a lot of guilt, as in all of the British empires. But has it tipped too far into over-compensation? Well, they must feel a lot of guilt?
.