Clearing the way.

 

24 SEP 2024

 

Who knew I’d still be here and using modern tech to write in what’s known as a “blog”? That I’ve made friends around the world via “social media,” or can talk long distance via my car? Or, if I wanted to, and I don’t, have a washer and dryer I can control with my cell phone? (I genuinely see no purpose or advantage.)

 When I think about my grandparents living from the horse and buggy days, with no indoor plumbing or electricity to men walking on the moon, or my mother having lived with neither of the above to using a computer, it blows my mind (for lack of a better expression).

Sketchy sentences, to be sure, but I think my intent is to bridge the gap, as it were, between what was and what is, even what will be. I got to thinking about all this as I’m trying to weed all the excess books out of my house and the hardest thing to get rid of are my dad’s old uni textbooks. I can’t, I simply cannot. Many of my mother’s books? No problem. But somehow the ones Daddy used at Trinity U I just can’t part with.

At one point, seven years ago, when Mother died, I said (quite foolishly, knowing better), I’m going to read ALL THE BOOKS, because I had just inherited a bunch of hers and they all looked interesting.

***station break for insane laughter***

Of course, some of those I kept because they seemed interesting about language or were good reference books, but I’ve had to face the hard reality I will never read all those interesting books about language and I can literally look up anything on the internet and it will be up to date, unlike some book on grammatical standards written in 1945.

So what makes me hang on to the now very outdated textbooks?  Sentimentality, plain and simple.

As a corollary, there is so much CRAP in this house and I’m 72 years old, I seriously need to employ Margareta Magnusson’s ‘gentle art of Swedish death cleaning, because no one needs to be saddled with all my junk.

Cheers, y’all.