So far this is hard work. It takes way more time than I intend to spend, and the results are still imperfect. Soon those I love and those I know, and maybe some I don't yet know but will, and more that I shall never know, and a variety of automatons too will read some of this; and then what? What's the point, why bother, especially in regard to the know and love categories? After all, I can just walk to the next room or push a few buttons and I can talk, and even better, they can respond in real time. For those farther away there are real letters (the last ones I can remember writing other than for work, banking, or legal requirements were decades ago), the holiday letters (unwritten or unsent for the past several years), birthday/anniversary cards (oops forgot, sorry), the occasional email (placed in a special folder of important needed follow-up, and still there), sometimes an instant or text message (quick but devoid of thoughtful consideration), ... Sigh. Even if I did those things as I know I should, most would find their way to a landfill or evaporate in the æther and be forever lost.
Over the past couple years two fathers of mine died, my own and my wife's. We moved back to her home town and into the house she grew up in with him so that he would not have to leave the town, the mountains, and his friends in order to get the physical help he needed. He was a remarkable man with a wealth of experience, wisdom, and tales tall and otherwise. He did immeasurable good for thousands of people and for his community, most of which will never be known because of who he was and how he went about it. His life was the inspiring stuff of best-selling biographies, a true adventure on every level, but he kept his own counsel. He was a man of action and a man of words, but never were the words of his story penned. An now except for those who loved and knew him well, the story fades.
My father was also a remarkable man. Very different in his life experience from my father-in-law, but also wise, strong, intelligent, and private. His story was not so much told in words as it was in pictures: thousands of photographs along with tablets filled with designs and drawings. An engineer, problem solver, and an artist of whom one could have said as Buckminster Fuller did, "When I am working on a problem, I never think about beauty. I only think of how to solve the problem. But when I have finished, If the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong."
He and my mother were as one being. Now that he has passed, her mind will not show her the images any more. In the necessary process of moving them from the house that was their home for half a century into assisted living; sometime during the sorting and storing, moving and removing, rummage and estate selling, and moving and storing again, the photographs went missing. He never knew that, I hope.
I still can see them all in my mind, I must have seen every slide a hundred times. They told his story of family, love, work, fun and travel. But now only I, and over a shorter span my younger brothers, can see this story. Others will never see the simple beauty and the rich complexity. I cannot share them with my sons as he did with his.
In spite of all its flaws, and there are many, this medium can overcome to some extent 'the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune' that befalls all things. I tell my students to be very careful in what they post online because it can follow them forever. That's the bad news, and in this case the good news. Almost two decades ago I heard Nicholas Negroponte talk in his MIT Media Lab about bits and atoms foretelling what was then ahead, and now is. Being Digital offers a way perhaps to change the rules of atoms that have and are continuing to extirpate the artifacts of my fathers' lives.
It has been said that you don't truly understand something until you teach it. Writing is similar in that it forces one to refine and clarify your thoughts so that they will make sense to others as well as to yourself. Over time this collection of introspection can yield a rich mosaic portrait of the soul of the author. My wife doubtless knows me better than I know myself, but not in the same way. My sons and brothers knew me this way once for a time, but distance and circumstance can distort what was once reality; and time paints a new reality as it passes by.
The blogs of my favorite niece serve as inspiration for what I have now begun. Without her blog, I would have never known her as an adult. I would not have understood first hand the power of bits. I don't expect to be as polished, as preceptive, as prolific, or as phunny as she, but I will be as honest.
This time of the year there are several must-do tasks that, well, must be done in order to avoid doing a lot more work later. A "you can pay me now, or pay me [more] later" situation. Two of these chores are stacking firewood and raking leaves. Of these, I think stacking the firewood is much more satisfying.
Raking the leaves is the end of something, and worse, when you are done there is nothing but bare trees. Stacking the wood on the other hand requires geometrical reasoning, planning, and problem solving. Even better, when you are done you have something to show for your work, and you know you will benefit all Winter.
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