Sunday, November 11, 2012

post 2.2.1.0 Family Pictures

When I clear my desk, I'll write tasks and categories on 3x5 cards. That will feel literary, if only temporarily. I bought a file cabinet to sort my Mother's life and estate into, to sort her pictures and her Mother's pictures and her grandmother's pictures into. I have become the family archivist. 

There are days and weeks of work to do there. Possibly months. No one cares.

On the internet, there a term: bit rot. The internet is heavily interlinked, but sites are withdrawn or stop working all the time. Unless you comb through all your old work, testing links, your work will eventually be filled with links that go nowhere and attach to nothing. Bit rot.

Pictures are like that. Unless they are labeled, with time, place, and cast of characters, and unless you regularly pull them out and tell younger relatives the story of that time, that place, those people, the pictures will eventually suffer bit rot. Your children, grandchildren, nieces, whatever will look at them and feel no connection beyond, perhaps, 'who the hell are these people?'

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