Tuesday, February 5, 2013

On the side of a lake 2000 years ago




A hundred years from now, I assume things posted on FaceBook, LinkedIn, Blogs and software we don’t know about yet will still be floating in cyber space.  What would the world be like today if we knew Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln and other notable figures thoughts.  Well we do to some extent because they wrote letters and many of them have been saved, recorded and archived for us to get a glimpse of their inner being.  You just have to ask yourself, what would Washington have Tweeted when he cut down the Cherry tree.  Did he really have an ethical dilemma or did he know someone had seen him and he better come clean to keep his ass from being worn out. 
While Jefferson, Napoleon and others wrote letters and recorded things, probably unintentionally, for future generations.  We do, however, have a serious gap in information.  With the invention of the telephone people started talking to each other and didn’t record what was happening.   While I have no basis for this statement I would guess that the 60’s, 70’s and early 80’s have very little recorded information.  Well maybe the Nixon tapes are a worthwhile look at history. 
Carole was talking with our friend “K” this weekend about things her mother and father did.  We have realized how little we know about their early life.  Wouldn’t it have been fun to go back and look at Rufus Deal’s FaceBook pages when he was playing football with the Washington Redskins?  (At least he has a Wikipedia reference.)  Other than the little he told me while sitting around the stove, drinking whiskey at the camp house there is very little I know about his life during that time.  And I know more than his daughters know.  My father was the first truck driver for Floyd and Beasley.  Where did he go?  What was it like?  What was it like to be in a fox hole in the Battle of the Bulge?  What a loss of understanding of whom our parents were. 
How different today is, everything is recorded in digital cyber space.  Need a news article from July 23 of this year, just ask Google to find it for you.  Email and texting are the communication of choice.  How many times have you seen teenage girls sitting at a table across or side by side texting each other?  Have they forgotten how to talk?  All of this is being recorded on some server with multiple backups.  It is there forever!  You can search it 10 years from now, 100 years, 2000 years?  Think about Jesus tweeting.  Wow.
Ok why am I rambling on like this?  So far I have been doing blogs on travel, things Carole and I have done, Wooden Boat School and other minor stuff.  After listening to Carole this weekend I thought it might be a way to tell our stories for future generations.  Life is about the number of stories you can tell when you die.  Also you can blame this on my friend Lisa. (http://www.isoldmypearlstodoit.com) She has taught me to share stories that tell about your life.  (She is a much better writer.)  I started listing some of my best memories today and I now have a list of about 60 things to blog about.  So over the next few months? Years? Whatever? I am going to record some of these stories.  I hope I don’t embarrass anyone but myself.
I hope anyone 2000 years from now who reads this enjoys my southern humor.