Lynn has been on a sorting and tossing spree. It can be surprising what good judgment she has about what should go even when we disagree. While working on her papers and records, she came across Christmas letters we sent out over the past years. We spent some time reading them aloud today.
It gives me a feeling of comfort and grounding if I know what happened when. We have about 40 years of Christmas letters. Of course, such documents are not used to report domestic squabbles or small irritations that have burdened us from time to time. When you read a Christmas letter, you get highlights, positive events and accomplishments of importance. Still, it is nice to know what year jobs started and ended, memorable trips were taken.
The development of the internet and our learning how to make some use of it has been important in many ways. Yesterday, I wrote about forwarding, something that is easy, quick and useful with email. But the transmission of photos, videos and even ebook gifts do indeed change what we can do and with whom. I started some use of a computer in 1965 but that was the laundry arrangement of giving the attendant punched cards and returning in a day to pick up the results.
Lynn has degrees and experience in computing and taught me about making web pages and understanding what they were. She realized that the elementary school library she ran would work well with a computer. We bought one and she lugged it to her school each day and lugged it home after using it all day to run her library. When summer came, the computer stayed home and I used it steadily. When she started taking it to school in the fall, I bought another computer. She is still irritated that she had to lug while I bought my own tool. The Christmas letters help us remember our difficulties in this matter even though she now feels her own heroic measures helped me grow.
By 1984, we had our own computer at home. Computers can be helpful but they need good software. She gave me Appleworks for Father's Day that year and it launched lots of writing, information manipulation and calculation. My friend told me that he could see that I liked computers and predicted that I would like them even more when the internet and web sites got rolling.
It has been my interest in mediation and watching my own mind and events in my life that has led to my daily blogging, a term I didn't like at first but I accept now. Google's Drive, Docs, Blogger and Gmail have really added richness and connection to different moments in time and to different people
