And the Significance Is?

October 25, 1999

The last couple of days have seen my free time occupied with a quest for the original missing diary. The edited copy in my possession has only wet my appetite.

Earlier tonight I read through a catalogue of lists in a major university library collection. The list gave a short description of each item, and other information for a researcher.

I was struck with a rather curious thought tonight as I read through lists that said things such as:

A diary of a woman from ….. slave relations, society events, cost of plantation goods.
Bill of sale for a slave named…..
Scrapbook from the xxxx family, photographs, correspondence and school reports.

Ok, so the question is this. Put yourself in my shoes, only go forward another 100 years. Just what would you like for me to be reading as I browse through the archives of the university library where you live?

And the significance would be?

Makes you stop and think.

At least it did for me.

Not that I am saying that everything that we record has to be a piece of profound writing. It just struck me that someday, someone might be reading pages from my family scrapbook. And as I look through the pages of that book in my mind, a question I have is, what would it say? Is that what I would like for it to say?

Be your own historian. Write a message to a reader a hundred years in the future. Who knows, you might end up in your library archives.

- another pondering from the wandering