June 17, 2016

The word I have selected is connecting. Think of all the different forms of connecting we do in our lives. Dots, friends, chain letters and the list goes on.

One of the great connections is to our past. Are we, in this electronic age, losing any long term connection with each other? Let us see what we can discover about the way we live in this modern electronic push a button age.

Many of us have letters that our parents and grandparents wrote to a friend or loved one. We can touch those letters, read their contents and in so doing put ourselves into the situations that they describe.

For some of us older folks we will be traveling back in time to the 1800’s when our forebears lived without electricity, possibly running water and central heating. An automobile was a rare site and if you were traveling by horse and buggy your source of transport could be scared out of its wits by that contraption.

The letters might be from a loved one who had gone to fight the War to end all wars and died in the fields of France. How tragic yet loving that we can still have the connection to that person. Those letters sometimes bring home the horror of what mankind can do to one another. Our hope is we connect to this and figure out a way to not repeat it.

Today we tweet, twitter and e-mail with abandon. But wait, are you saving those thumb tap gems for future generations, or do they disappear into to ethos at the slip of a finger? We should remember that twitter begins with twit!

How wonderful to connect with the past through daguerreotypes, photographs and the drawings we did in first grade. Do you hang your cellphone on the front of the refrigerator? I know that people are constantly flipping their fingers across their I pad to show a million pictures that the took while visiting Aunt Gertrude at the home, but does anyone take the time to print them and save for the future.

Remember, technology changes and things don’t get transferred and bingo, they are gone forever.

Working as I do with the records and archives of the town, I have an appreciation of the importance of connection. Your ability to sell or mortgage your property depends on the connection of the chain of title. If there is a broken link in that chain it can cause delays in vital transactions.

Do you realize that paper is one of the most secure ways of providing connections to our past? It has a relative safe life of 500 years or more. Think of the papyrus the Egyptians wrote on that is still around. Micro film is better, 100 years and compact discs 5 t0 10 years. Which one do you want your record on?

Many older items give us a connection even though torn, scratched or even charred. A 78 RPM record from the 1920’s can be scratched but still played if one can spin it at the proper speed. All you have to do is make a paper cone, put a common pin through the small end and rest it on the spinning record and low and behold, sound will come out although faint. Can you do that with a scratched CD?

So I implore you, take the time to connect in person, face to face, so that you feel the warmth of another’s soul. Take the time to play interactive card or board games to get to know how those people think and solve problems. Yes, there are problems in cards and board games.

So I would ask you to connect, feel the warmth of humanity, and enjoy life and leave a legacy of yourself whether large or small. Leave a connection for the future generations to enjoy.