Write me, please!

And don't worry about the two cents extra the post office will be charging, come Monday. After all, it'll cost less than a cup of bottled water, still.

I'm a notorious accumulator of useless facts on pretty (and not-so-pretty) paper. I have kept every letter ever sent me. Somewhere, in the bowels of my filing system, is the first note I ever received from a boy, in fifth grade (alongside the note is a picture of his cat, Fred). Frighteningly, I have postcards from my sister, quick notes from my mother, farewell cards from my ex-students, and even old business correspondences (except for the useful ones, like recently-paid bill statements. Those I lose right before I need them).

No matter how often I've moved house, I've always managed to pack away the paper. Someday, if some poor fool archaelogist should come across my file cabinet while digging, he will discover the mundane nature of a midwestern girl's social life.

This does make me wonder, though, what will they have of the electronic world? In a few hundred years, will any of what we've blogged be even remotely available to the historian? Paper -- especially the old rag-content stuff -- lasts a very long time. Vellum, parchment, papyrus, also endure, if kept in reasonably steady climates free of mold. But media we used for research even 15 years ago (e.g. microfilm, microfiche) are viewed as dinosaurs already, and, when most people encounter them in an archivist's clutches, they have to ask for help in learning how to read them. The celluloid, too, rapidly breaks down, so those records will have shorter lifespans, even, than the original paper documents they were designed to replace. And, old e- mails vanish entirely (unless you are important enough to blackmail, in which case they will be circulated at the least opportune moment).

All this comes to my mind because, while I can still open an envelope and read what my then-fiance wrote to me while we were apart in 1978, I can't open a file containing bad poems I wrote last year, because I misplaced the disk with the old Wordperfect software since we upgraded this last time, and, anyway, the computer would probably choke and sputter and spew a cloud of smoke if I made it try to read something in such an archaic language as was written in the 1980s. I left Mom's computer, went back to my own desk (the one with the nine different Parker "51" pens and the quill -- from a real, then-healthy crow -- and the Stratford stationery and the Higgins India Ink and the blotter and pad), opened the file drawer beneath, and pulled out the battered folder filled with the old printouts and corrections.

AAAahhhhhhhh.....

Now, the only thing which can threaten my data would be fire or flood... and if last year's weather is any indication, I won't see the latter any time soon.