Fun at work

[altivo]

What? You say work isn't supposed to be fun? Well, sometimes it can be.

One of the tasks I occasionally have that I particularly enjoy is handling mail or e-mail reference requests. Typically these are people doing genealogy who want copies of old obituaries or wedding announcements. Usually they have a date and a name, and the event was in Harvard or nearby.

Harvard had its own newspaper from the middle of the 19th century until 1986. We have the complete run (minus a few issues that have never been found anywhere) on microfilm, along with short runs of some competing newspapers that didn't last as long. I always enjoy looking at hundred year old newspapers. It's like stepping into the past. Even the advertising is interesting.

Late this afternoon my boss left a print of an e-mail on my desk. Someone asking for a couple of articles mentioning a certain lady who died in 1953. So off I went to the local history room. There was an older fellow in there looking closely at some of the books we have on display in glass cases. He seemed quite absorbed, so I went ahead and unlocked the microfilm cabinet and took out the reels I needed, and sat down to scan through them for the necessary dates.

Somewhere in the middle of the first search I realized he was watching over my shoulder. No problem. I just went ahead and got what I needed. When I rewound the second reel he put his hand on my shoulder and I looked up into a very smiley face. "Do you like my time machine?" I asked.

"Yes," he said. "I enjoyed watching that. I knew most of those people whose pictures were in the paper."

I made a point of explaining that he was welcome to read the old papers if he wished, but he didn't seem to want to do that. He was happy just with the brief glimpse of a world half a century gone.

The lady about whom the articles had been written was a local resident all her life, and had been a school teacher. As I addressed the envelope to send them to the requester, I was doing math in my head. This old guy must have been at least 75 years old. That means he was 22 when she died at age 90, and it's just possible that she had been his teacher at some point. That would only be if she worked past today's normal retirement age, but it wasn't so unusual for people to do that prior to World War 2. Lacking that, he may have known her anyway. She was a well known and active member of the Catholic church in town, and engaged in many volunteer and charitable activities.

It makes me wonder, though. What will be left of most of us in a hundred years? A hundred years ago the population was only a third or so of what it is today. Local newspapers covered everything: who came to visit whom, who was in the hospital, who had a birthday party or tea party, even who painted their house a new color. People wrote real letters, and saved the ones they received in boxes and trunks... I also cataloged a nine volume set of the collected writings of Abraham Lincoln today. The earliest were facsimiles of crumbling pages of his school notebooks, from 1824, and newspaper advertisements and legal pleadings from the beginning of his career as a lawyer. The last were letters and notes he wrote on the day he died in 1865.

Abraham Lincoln was not much older than I am when he was assassinated. By comparison, what have I done with my life? Even moreso, what have I left behind that will survive that long? Today people don't write letters on paper, or keep journals in hard copy. It's hard to envision a set of books containing the "Collected E-mails of Hillary Rodham Clinton" isn't it? It makes me wonder if we're creating a society with no personal history, one in which no individual will be remembered or understood even fifty years after they are gone.

Comments

[atomicat.livejournal.com]

You've hit on something I've thought of often here. What sorts of immortality are afforded us? For most of course, the route is children. Even that is very ephemeral if say, you're shit as a dad/mom (grin). Beyond the third generation you really won't be remembered, except for what you've done. So, this leaves us art and deeds, creations, thoughts. I think about this because I'd like to be remembered, and wouldn't we all. Will I be able to create something that will truely outlive me?

Great story. Would you mind if I cross-posted it onto my journal? I'm sure there's a number of people there who'd love to read it and would have good thoughts on the subject.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Go ahead. I'm interested in any comments that might arise.

[mymaimary.livejournal.com]

What a wonderful story. It really does make you think.

For ourselves (me and the Mr.) we're building a house that will be as energy efficient as the modern mind and solar/wind power that an veteran of 26 years of solar car racing and a family of environmental engineers can make it. The house will be built to stand for 1000 years, with hanging walls and pipes that can be moved as the layout and flow are changed.

There's a hubris here, an assumption that someone in 50 years won't look at this house the way that I view tri-levels like I grew up in. It'll be a pain to take down. Maybe that's our real legacy. Sad thought.

I'm trying to get G-pa to let me scan in all his old math notes. He was a tinkerer and a creator. Even if the ideas are never put into existance beyond models, imagination is his legacy to us.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

I've taken somewhat different steps in that direction. Some might still work. In 1985 I was redecorating a 110 year old house my partner and I had bought. After peeling seven layers of wallpaper out of the tiny foyer, a friend and I wrote names and the date on the wall, along with comments about all the wallpaper that had been removed on that date. Then I covered it over again with a heavy vinyl paper that would have lasted through decades of repaintings and pasteovers. Alas, when we sold the house 15 years later, the buyers practically gutted it. I doubt they even noticed, though I had certainly enjoyed deciphering the clues left by prior occupants. Sort of like the British custom where thatchers leave a stoppered bottle hidden in the thatch with a sort of time capsule note about the year in which the roof was thatched. Each time the roof is redone, the old notes are left and a new one added. Some roofs in England have been there for centuries, reworked every 40 years or so...

I love that sort of thing. I was called upon a couple of weeks back to try to help salvage the contents of a time capsule that was buried in Harvard 50 years ago. The capsule had leaked. The newspapers and other items inside were a sodden mass. We decided to try freeze drying it. Won't know the results for some time yet...

[cabcat.livejournal.com]

Some people will still keep hard copies of things, but dad mentioned this too about the lack of historical records. However out of all the millions, billions and trillions of people who lived and died in the past, only a few of them are ever remembered and to be honest it'll only ever be like that.

Hopefully the emo ramblings of myspace will be gone forever in 50 years.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Some will keep hard copies, sure. But those are probably not the things we really need to save copies of. ;p Myspace, or Livejournal for that matter, could be gone in 25 hours or even 25 minutes and never be recovered.

[cabcat.livejournal.com]

Hurrah!, I don't want some highly intelligent future person reading my inane ramblings.

[ruwhei.livejournal.com]

> Abraham Lincoln was not much older than I am when he was assassinated. By comparison, what have I done with my life? Even moreso, what have I left behind that will survive that long?


---

Whenever someone says something like this, I am reminded of an ancient roman writer. He was an older Legionaire in the republic, recently sent to Hispania to serve at that distant outpost. The town had a statue of Alexander the Great.

He looked wistfully at Alexander's statue. "Alexander conquered the world by the time he was 30," he said. "And look at me, older, and nothing to show for it, and nothing for the world to remember me by."

Many years later, the world would indeed remember him, for he was Julius Ceasar.

Et tu, Ru?

[altivo.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure I want to leave that sort of mark. *digs in desk drawer* Here:

Roman coins Acquired on eBay about ten years ago. You can barely make out the portraits. I suppose an expert could date them and identify the emperor whose image appears on them. These were dug up somewhere in Britain, and their age fascinates me. Who buried them? Why did the owner never retrieve them? How many hands had they passed through?

I'd rather leave some kind of meaningful art. Music. Literature. Working on it.

I guess this whole thing is partly inspired by a large donation of books I've been sifting through this week. The assistant principal of the high school is retiring. He was a history teacher, and just gave us a trunk load of history books. About 20% of them will end up in the library collection, the rest will be sold. They are pretty substantial works, like that collection of Lincoln's writings. Many have the donor's signature inside the cover.

As a respected teacher, I'm sure this man has made an impression on hundreds of students during his career. But when someone takes one of his books off the library shelf twenty years from now, and sees his name inside, will they know who he was? Will they care? These things always make me wonder, but how many other people pay attention?

Re: Et tu, Ru?

[songdogmi.livejournal.com]

Guess you could put a plaque up in the library acknowledging him as a donor of a portion of your history collection, with a little bio data and maybe a photo. Sounds like a significant number of books, and it might be appropriate to honor him.

The thing is, in order to be remembered, someone has to be inspired to do the remembering, and to do it in such a way that a little critical mass of remembering is achieved and supports itself over time. I'm not sure how one does that, because at a certain point it's out of your hands completely. I bet a lot of it happens by accident.

Re: Et tu, Ru?

[altivo.livejournal.com]

In the larger view, no, it's not that large a donation. We've had some ten or twenty times larger in the time I've been here. If the donor requests it, we put a bookplate in saying "Donated by..." but even that is of limited value. We have a wall on the outside of the building where each brick bears the name of a donor who contributed to the construction. Near the front desk is the "Donors' Clock," a tall case clock with little engraved brass nameplates for everyone who gave donations in various amounts. We still add to that. In the last two years we've received several large cash donations from people's estates, as directed in their wills. Probably that practice won't go on much longer, since most people no longer seem to think libraries are that important in the scheme of things, but at present it's very helpful.

However, even in those cases, where two donations were in the six figure range, all we did was put one of those brass plates on the clock. It takes more than material things to create a lasting history for oneself I think.

Re: Et tu, Ru?

[songdogmi.livejournal.com]

It takes more than material things to create a lasting history for oneself I think.

By which I take you to mean brass plates. Yes, I suppose it does. And it probably does no good to set out with that as your goal - better to set out to create something that's an end unto itself, which just might become part of lasting history. Or to do good for others, which may make them think well of you when you're gone as long as they're around.

This subject is kind of making me think about things. And now my head hurts. :)

Re: Et tu, Ru?

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Sorry. I didn't mean to make anyone's head hurt. You have a good thing you've made already. Your music is durable and will survive for some time. You just have to keep doing it so that there is enough of a body of work for someone to assemble the bits later.

I've published a fair amount of writing, but not enough and there's little to tie it together yet. Same goes for me. I need to do more.

[dongstyle-ltd.livejournal.com]

What is it about greatness that we are compelled to think about making a lasting mark on history?

What do we care of what people remember us by after we die? What do we care of our place in the history records, or lack thereof?

I am not advocating a selfish disregard of the matter at hand, of course. Your reflections have touched upon one of the cornerstones of the enduring questions of humankind. I suspect that it is a question endemic to humans only, but nonetheless it seems a very valid one within our context, because to me it relates to the conundrum of the "meaning of life".

To the question "what is the meaning of life", I have a particularly existential outlook- I personally prefer to think that there is no ultimate metaphysical meaning, no telos or ultimate end of humanity. Not to say we can't have goals, dreams, hopes of our own, but perhaps many people tend to go about the business in a misguided manner.

My own dreams are not primarily for the purpose of being great. I acknowledge that most of them relate to my own personal needs, reflected in my consideration of the greater part of everybody else. Whether trying to 'save the world' or 'nudge people in the right direction', whatever that might entail, will eventuate with my being burnt into the annals of history with great respect, great hatred, or nothing at all does not matter so much to me...what matters is how I have lived with others and myself as it has progressed through each stage.

But you're right. As the population and our awareness of the world expands, our modes of communication and interaction have been somewhat distanced, depersonalised. As societies grow to large, we fragment off into micro-social groups and become lost in a sea of largely indifferent, close-minded individuals. The personal history of a person to their friends is much different from the personal history of a person in the public eye. Perhaps, for the most of us, we should turn to those people that we see, hear, write, and as for the rest, come to terms with our own insignificance.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure I care so much about making a "mark on history" as I do about making a difference to people. But I'd like that difference to be more than ephemeral. ;p

[dongstyle-ltd.livejournal.com]

So then...what is "more than ephemeral"? People die, and history fades, and eventually is rewritten, however enduring it might seem relative to the span of our own lives. And humanity is but a passing scene in the play of the universe of existence. Maybe.

Hum- best not to take that one at face value. But everything we do leaves an indelible mark, really. It just depends on how you look at it ;)

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Ah, well, by ephemeral I mean literally something that lasts a day and disappears, like a lily blossom or the specials menu at a restaurant. Sure, in the universal sense, nothing is permanent, not even the fabric of the universe if our understanding of physics is anywhere near accurate.

My fondest wish would probably be to have some sort of literary contribution to my credit that will still be read a century or two from now. That is at least still possible, if not likely. In the immediate sense, I'm happy enough when someone says I've made them feel better about a problem or even helped them to resolve it.

(I've added you as a friend now, so your comments won't need unscreening. Having peeked at your own journal, I'm looking forward to reading more of it.)

[dongstyle-ltd.livejournal.com]

Okay, now I've elicited the specifics, I can say that I certainly don't suppress wishes for the same. And I can also say I certainly wouldn't want to put in all the effort for nothing, to be dismissed and swept under as a failure...or would I?

Ultimately it's me who is making these statements. Regardless of what I do or how I affect others, I doubt I could ever transcend my very being, and so it eventually all reflects back on me, and I do think that this applies to every individual. Like you say, when somebody tells me I've helped them, or when I can tell that somebody is thankful for something I've done, that makes me happy.

Besides, I am not particularly results oriented- more process oriented. Yet at present, I'm also relatively a colt- perhaps this outlook may change as life goes on. Having already had glimpses of such now, I suspect that this would indeed be the case- as time ticks away, I'll start wondering more about what I have done and what remains to be done rather than what I am doing. Maybe.

[atomicat.livejournal.com]

Where to start, I always get loopy when I have too many flavors in my mouth.

THat pushing and nudging, making a positive mark on people. Who knows where that will lead? It's all the chaotic small events, collectively, that shape reality. I'm very proud of the fact that I saved a young guy from a bad situation. Gave him a boost, taught him to stand up for himself, and shape his own destiny. Did this long distance with only the ol' MSN. Who knows what he'll do in the future? Ha! Probably the next Hitler! Aiee! Shades of "Dead-Eye Dick", guy's dad saves Hitler from starving and freezing to death in Vienna. Oops!

Of course the immortality of works and art is an ego thing primarily. I looked at that decaying sculpture garden with such sadness. How temporary! I don't know what was in the artist's mind but he certainly didn't construct them for permanency. I'd certainly like anything I do to have a wee bit longer of a lifespan than his. Yah, it's an ego thing. I was here! Hear me roar!

History and Legacy

[doug-taron.livejournal.com]

Your message reminds me of a project that we have been working on here at the museum for several years. One of our 19th century plant collectors was a woman named Elizabeth Atwater. We have been unpacking some of her herbarium specimens that have been in storage, mounting them on acid-free herbarium sheets, and entering them into a database. The speciems are still in their original field wrappings of newspaper from the mid 1800s. The newspaper has been as interesting as the plant specimens. Even the ads are cool. One of the plants was wrapped on a page with a story chronicalling the hour by hour changes as Lincoln succumbed to his wounds, printed within a week of his death.

In terms of what will be left of me a century hence, I hope that large parts of it have to do with the Fen. Also, I'm hoping that some of the restored populations of rare butterflies I'm starting are still going well past 100 years from now.

Re: History and Legacy

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Actually, if you stick around Chicago, I suspect that much of what will be easily identifiable about you will have to do the the museum. Having done some Chicago historical research myself, I can tell you that you have already done enough to leave a clear trace on the records. :)

I'm impressed that specimens wrapped in 150 year old newsprint have survived in good enough condition to still be useful. I wouldn't have thought that possible. I'm not surprised, however, that you found the newspapers as interesting as the specimens. Having spent a fair amount of time reading newspapers from the 1920s back to the Civil War era, I know how fascinating they can be.

(I see you've created an account here, so I added you to my friends list. That means any comments you post will no longer require me to unscreen them, and you can read anything I post under a lock, though I rarely do that.)

Re: History and Legacy

[doug-taron.livejournal.com]

I hadn't really though much about my work at the museum itself, though you are probably right. In terms of the Fen and the butterflies, it's not even so much that I'm hoping to be remembereed for this. Mainly, I'm hoping that my work in both of these areas will have an enduring effect. With global climate change becoming more of a reality, I consider it very much an open question.

[kaysho.livejournal.com]

Reminds me of the old Sumerian tablets that, when deciphered, turned out to be a student's practice "notebook", in which he was complaining that the food at school wasn't very good.

The more things change ...

[altivo.livejournal.com]

I seem to recall that most Sumerian tablets are just lists of inventories. So many cows, so many sheep, so many jugs of wine, etc. Never heard of that one, but that's pretty good.