Enlarge, if you dare!Well, here we are in beautiful New Jersey, and it's so beautiful I can't believe it. Deep green canopy, poignant cut grass, people in shirtsleeves instead of hoodies. Yes, I feel guilty enjoying the spring here without paying the price all winter, but no one has stopped me on the street and asked for my ticket, so I guess I'll just enjoy the moment. Still, to those of you who have endured the cold winter, I salute you.
Now I have to deal with the paper problem. For over twenty-five years we have had a publishing company and we have accumulated hard copies. I've been a writer long before there were computers, and I have lovingly created bound journals. So did Virginia Woolf. I noted long ago that every time she had a bout of despair, she also seemed to have just endured a physical move or relocation. Coincidence? I wonder.
I have packed and unpacked pencils, Sharpies, Post-its, every kind of envelope, my collection of New Yorker covers that I used for lining envelopes -- it was so nice when I wrote letters. A pretty envelope was a special treat, and the covers were just too nice to look at once and throw away -- and perhaps you can begin to appreciate the extent of the problem here. LP records in their paper sleeves; every drawing my children and now my grandchildren ever made -- find me the parent who can throw them away! That person doesn't exist.
You may wonder why I bring the problem here to the electronic complaint window, but I really do need advice. What should we keep, and why? I was reading about a fascinating woman who died recently. She was known as the Red Duchess, and she catalogued and preserved her family's vast library, perhaps one of the largest and oldest in Europe. Some of her documents have the potential to rewrite history, thanks to her care.
Now, granted, this library was a bit older than mine by about 800 years, but still. A library is a library and paper is paper. If the power goes out, digital impulses die, but paper remains. And could the power go out? Gee ... ya think?
But folks, we didn't have this problem just a few short years ago. The day you dragged a computer into your life and plugged it in, you hit a fork in the intellectual road that is just getting wider and wider. Do you back up? Do you ever look back? Do you carry all that paper out to the dumpster and never visit the landfill? Or do you buy a hundred Stor-All boxes and indulge in alphabetization?
Just wondering. It's what's on my mind as I create the latest paper product, otherwise known as the May 2008 issue of UFO Magazine.
