Comments on: On The Cost of Memories so Fleeting http://thestormypresent.com/ocean/2008/05/22/on-the-cost-of-memories-so-fleeting/ Bursts of Clarity, Illuminated. Thu, 07 May 2009 15:48:24 -0600 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.6 hourly 1 By: FlannelDoormat http://thestormypresent.com/ocean/2008/05/22/on-the-cost-of-memories-so-fleeting/comment-page-1/#comment-74 FlannelDoormat Thu, 22 May 2008 19:51:52 +0000 http://thestormypresent.com/ocean/2008/05/22/on-the-cost-of-memories-so-fleeting/#comment-74 There are a lot of women (and fewer, but some men) like myself that are meticulous historians for their families. I purchased my digital camera about 6 years ago just before my son was born, and have followed roughly the same pattern of printing the best photos every 6 months (+/-), putting them together in scrapbooks and archiving the source files on both a CD and a portable hard drive. This has worked well for preservation except when my hard drive crashed and I didn't yet have the CD, luckily I had already printed the best shots, so I only lost a few months of 2nd tier pictures. I have also worked intermittantly over the last 14 years in compiling my family genealogy/history/folklore, taking interviews from aging relatives, scouring public records, writting letters and asking for information forms to be filled out, and scanning old photos from dozens of family treasure boxes. Sometimes a tedious and usually a thankless job, I like to think that at some point my children, or theirs, will be interested in their family history (my guess is that a photo will first catch their eyes) and will at least peruse one of the volumes I've compiled through the years. Generations of background and story are fading each day as our grandparents die off in droves, and some of us take the preservation of personal histories very seriously indeed; I think it helps us to understand where we've been, where we are, and who we might be. There are a lot of women (and fewer, but some men) like myself that are meticulous historians for their families. I purchased my digital camera about 6 years ago just before my son was born, and have followed roughly the same pattern of printing the best photos every 6 months (+/-), putting them together in scrapbooks and archiving the source files on both a CD and a portable hard drive. This has worked well for preservation except when my hard drive crashed and I didn’t yet have the CD, luckily I had already printed the best shots, so I only lost a few months of 2nd tier pictures.

I have also worked intermittantly over the last 14 years in compiling my family genealogy/history/folklore, taking interviews from aging relatives, scouring public records, writting letters and asking for information forms to be filled out, and scanning old photos from dozens of family treasure boxes. Sometimes a tedious and usually a thankless job, I like to think that at some point my children, or theirs, will be interested in their family history (my guess is that a photo will first catch their eyes) and will at least peruse one of the volumes I’ve compiled through the years. Generations of background and story are fading each day as our grandparents die off in droves, and some of us take the preservation of personal histories very seriously indeed; I think it helps us to understand where we’ve been, where we are, and who we might be.

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