Zandperl tipped me off to this:
www.pandora.com
It's a cool personalized web-radio that you can train! And - it's free. WOW. I was going to say "I'm loving it", but that's the McDonald's slogan, which makes me feel queasy, which is not at all how I feel about Pandora. I love the Pandora. I love it good.
I'm going to break with tradition and throw a question out to y'all (yes, all three of y'all). Do you have any favorite mementos or keepsakes? What makes them your favorite? Are there any events in your life from which you wish you had a keepsake, but don't? Are keepsakes worth keeping if they just live in a box and collect dust? Do you feel that having mementos can sometimes cheapen the actual memory of an event?
(The motivation for the last question is this: A few years after I graduated from high school, our choir teacher asked our other choir teacher to marry him. He found a beautiful outdoor spot and spent the day moving the furniture from his living room out there. After setting up the outdoor room, he brought her out for dinner, wine, and dancing, and popped the question. They took no photos of the setup or the event, because they wanted to simply have the memory live in their own two minds, and nowhere else. I've always thought that was sweet, but I also have some ascetic tendencies that this story appeals to.)
www.pandora.com
It's a cool personalized web-radio that you can train! And - it's free. WOW. I was going to say "I'm loving it", but that's the McDonald's slogan, which makes me feel queasy, which is not at all how I feel about Pandora. I love the Pandora. I love it good.
I'm going to break with tradition and throw a question out to y'all (yes, all three of y'all). Do you have any favorite mementos or keepsakes? What makes them your favorite? Are there any events in your life from which you wish you had a keepsake, but don't? Are keepsakes worth keeping if they just live in a box and collect dust? Do you feel that having mementos can sometimes cheapen the actual memory of an event?
(The motivation for the last question is this: A few years after I graduated from high school, our choir teacher asked our other choir teacher to marry him. He found a beautiful outdoor spot and spent the day moving the furniture from his living room out there. After setting up the outdoor room, he brought her out for dinner, wine, and dancing, and popped the question. They took no photos of the setup or the event, because they wanted to simply have the memory live in their own two minds, and nowhere else. I've always thought that was sweet, but I also have some ascetic tendencies that this story appeals to.)
19 Comments:
At 8:33 PM,
zandperl said…
That's really cute moving the furniture out there, noe they can look at thefurniture and remember it. I have in the past had a tendancy to take too many photos and not enjoy the event, but now that I'm conscious of that I've found a good balance (for me, others with me often think I still photo too much). It's hard for me to get rid of physical mementos, part of what makes cleaning so hard for me.
At 10:34 AM,
Anonymous said…
Zandperl makes a really good point: it's all about balance.
Personally, I prefer to keep a small selection of photos and mementos. This way, years from now, I dno't have to sort through boxes nad boxes of, say, "high school stuff" to find what was really important at the time. You shouldn't have so many keepsakes that you're annoyed at having to move them every time you move. These things shouldn't become a chore or a burden.
Regarding the issue of too much documentation (say, too many pictures) I agree. Too much can permanently color an event, setting it down in history as having taken place just from that one point of view. It could make it more difficult to think back on and learn new things from one's own history.
At 3:49 PM,
Kate Wall said…
Ahem....allow me to point out that there are more than 3 of us. At least 5 - so there.
And...I take too many photos - it's a known fact. But how many of them do I actually blog? Few to none most of the time. But it's the actual taking of the photo that documents in my mind the specific occasion. And I would defintely call my blog my momentos of fun occasions, and it's easy to move around when I move!
Other than my photos, I don't hold on to things unless they are super special. I have very few things I have kept through the years.
At 11:47 PM,
j said…
Good points, all. I don't tend to hold on to much, but sometimes I think back and wish I had kept a certain thing or another. Half the time, I know I've kept something, but have no idea where it is. (That picture at Girls' Camp of me and Corn Child when we were 14 wearing Red Vines buckets on our heads? Where IS that??) Sometimes I run across something that I've kept accidentally - a note from Mr. Blue, maybe - and I'm glad I didn't do my usual thing and throw it out. But honestly, I don't keep much. I just get too annoyed by having all that stuff around!
I think photos are great mementos because they don't take up much space... especially in this day of digital photography!
At 12:10 AM,
Jessica said…
I keep everything! I think you know that. I can drag out notes from junior high (not that I couldn't get rid of them). Looking through them every so often reminds me of that time in my life, whether good or bad. I know everything had to happen the way it did in order for me to be who I am today. Save your crap, throw it out, it's up to you. I will swear I remember something, then I forget until one day when I'm going through my junk, or my scrapbooks and the memories come back to me. I do have severe mommy brain, so I'm not one to compare yourself with :)
At 9:38 AM,
j said…
Sometimes I do run across things that remind me of an occasion I swore I'd never forget... of course, I did forget, and it's fun to have those memories flood back.
Speaking of junior high notes, Jess, did I tell you I found the Lurching Church a few weeks ago?? I was going to bring it to your scrapbooking class but I forgot! That's something I'll never throw away. :)
At 11:28 PM,
Aitara said…
Some of the things that are still around from when I was a kid, my mom now has (space camp stuff comes to mind..). I used to keep t-shirts from EVERYTHING...even though they're about 15 sizes too big. I'm working on getting over that part. I'm huge on keeping pictures, and small stuffed...things...(wooly mammoth, anyone?)
At 12:04 PM,
Seven of Two said…
Kate makes a really good point. Based on that (and a more thoughtful appraisal of just how much stuff is lurking in filing cabinets, bins and drawers in my own home) I'd like to amend my comment.
I think I get where she's coming from about experiencing events more fully by documenting them; I've got journals going back twenty years, and I wouldn't get rid of a one of them. What colors events--setting them down in just one point of view--more than a person's own journal?
/apologizes for own hypocrisy :)
At 6:29 PM,
The Poor Barn Mom said…
I apologize for my late input on this one, J! I SO have a pic of us with buckets on our heads at girl's camp, by the way!
I'm guessing you're um...speaking of your lovey's tendency to collect things...? :) (Love ya, Mr. Blue!) Military Man has the same problem. Except his packrattedness manifests itself in dufflebags full of army uniforms that he doesn't even fit into anymore, piles of ammo clips and mountains of old hats that he just can't part with. Drives me absolutely bonkers! We won't even talk about the stupid cowboy hat I found upon our moving out to this house....GAH!
I have my little collections - my small gaggle of nesting dolls, my shells - but as far as momentos go I have a trunk where I keep every card that my grandma wrote to me; even after her stroke when it's obvious that the effort of writing was a difficult one. I still have all of the soap we stole from the Econo Lodge on the 9th grade choir trip to Flagstaff (I still find that funny), and I have swim team ribbons, family pictures and even the flowers from Camille's wedding in that box. Every so often (maybe once a year) I go through it and throw a few things away. Circumstances change (for instance, keeping all of the valentines from my ex-husband was not something I wanted to do anymore) so what I want kept will change with it. As far as journals go - I snubbed my inner Mo that was still calling out to me to "preserve my family history" and I put them all through the shredder. Too many bad memories and I doubt that anyone in 100 years is going to care that I adored Vance Acker.
I think it's important to have momentos for yourself and your family but it shouldn't become a chore. You know?
Anyway, there's my two cents. :D
At 4:02 AM,
j said…
Yes, Corn, you suspected correctly!! I thought I'd try to understand the compunction to keep lots of stuff, instead of just screaming "Why the fuck do you still have (insert dusty item's name here)?!?!" Some people say "Ah, just get rid of it!" but I don't feel right doing that. (Darling, now you know why I gave you the opportunity to fish your stuff out of the donation bags! That was no accident!) I think what it all boils down to what Corn said ("I think it's important... but it shouldn't become a chore"), but he and I are definitely not of the same mind when it comes to keepsakes.
On a separate note re: journals, I still have mine, although I regard them as hideous tattletales of the past. I suspect that, if I have teenagers someday, the journals may remind me that I too used to be an emotional trash-heap, but still managed to become a reasonably useful adult.
(And Corn, I want to see that pic of us with the buckets on our heads... I swear I have a copy of it somewhere around here!)
At 3:28 PM,
Seven of Two said…
Blue and Corn: do you guys want to journal, but are kept from it by bad memories of the Land of Mo (I can understand that; I've had a long-standing hatred of capri pants for much the same reason)?
At 7:01 PM,
The Poor Barn Mom said…
I do feel that way, Seven! I consider my blog my "journal" now, really. Even though it's been forever since I posted anything.
At 8:58 PM,
Seven of Two said…
I don't know; I'm never as open on my blog as I am in my own journal, and I leave out lots of details. You really never know who's reading what you post (or why they might be reading it).
The thing is, if you want to journal privately, don't let the Mormon proclivity for journaling keep you from it. Write for you.
Just because it's a "Mormon thing" doesn't mean it couldn't be a Corn Child thing if you want or need it to be. It doesn't equate to returning to the Mormon church, and it doesn't make you more suceptible to reMormification. It's just you, doing your thing.
At 9:01 PM,
j said…
Now that I've lost my teen angst, I don't feel much compunction to journal. Even my blog has very little about my own life! Not sure why that is, but I don't think it's related to Mormondom.
At 10:14 PM,
The Poor Barn Mom said…
Yeah, I think I've lost my teen angst too. And right now, frankly, I don't have the time! There's always that secret fear that I'm going to write out my darkest thoughts and then someone's going to read it. I tend to be more inhibited on my blog but I think that's a good thing. There are some things in my head that the world is simply not ready for, and never will be! :D
I'm totally contradicting myself. Huh.
At 10:52 PM,
j said…
I know why I don't journal. I'm afraid my future-self will be embarassed, just like my current-self is about my past journals. Although I don't think it can get more embarassing than 14 years old. Can it?? :) Whatever. Pour me another glass of merlot. Oh, wait, I guess I have to do that myself.
At 9:51 AM,
Seven of Two said…
And then there are these people:
"Cringe is a monthly reading series hosted by Sarah Brown at Freddy’s Bar & Backroom in Brooklyn. On the first Wednesday of each month, brave souls come forward and read aloud from their teenage diaries, journals, notes, letters, poems, abandoned rock operas, and other general representations of the crushing misery of their humiliating adolescence. It’s better and cheaper than therapy."
http://queserasera.org/cringe.html
At 8:05 PM,
Kate Wall said…
Chiming in again a little late....
I would love to be more personal on my blog and tell the world every little thing...it's quite liberating in fact. BUT, I had to delete my old blog, which was hilariously funny and personal, because it didn't portray my business in the right light. I want everyone to think I'm a superstar, and therefore can only say so much about my personal life.
At 10:08 AM,
j said…
Wow. WOW. It takes some cojones to get up in front of a group and read your old journals!
I suppose, Kate, that you could always make a more personal blog without your identifying information on it. Although that, too, is risky... especially in a business like yours which depends a lot on the web AND on first impressions.
I have something else to say on that note, but I'm going to make a separate post out of it. :)
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