About

From January to March of 2011, I watched my beloved home of twelve years literally fall apart around me due to damage from multiple critical freezes. The electric shorted out, my water pipes burst, my furnace was destroyed, the foundation suffered a partial collapse, and eventually as it warmed, black mold crept in.  Between the water and mold damage, I lost most everything - clothing, furniture, my home itself - but my most beloved possessions were my diaries, letters, essays, papers, photos, and assorted other memorabilia.  I cannot describe the panic and heartache I felt as I slogged through water-soaked letters from childhood, mold-encrusted family photos, decades of diaries at risk of turning to dust.

There was no way I could pack up and move all these cherished possessions - some of them could barely be touched without falling to pieces, much less risk carrying the deadly mold with me to my new home.  So a decision was made to try to save whatever I could through digital photography and scanning to PDF.  My brother, my best friend Brianna, her three oldest kids, and several other friends heroically - and at some risk to health - helped me scan and digitize my lifetime's worth of quickly-deteriorating paper-based stuff.  This mad-rush to digitize and photograph as much as we could before it was too late took sixteen days, 14-18 hours each day, the kids using steam irons, blow dryers and the microwave to try to dry out and separate stuck pages, us adults manning a flat bed and a sheet fed scanner, all of this running off extension cord's coming from the only remaining working electrical outlet in my soon-abandoned home.  All while we watched the mold creep into everything.

In recognition that hard drives and other storage devices, while more durable than paper and photographs stacked in trunks, storage bins, shoe boxes and file cabinets, can also be lost or damaged, I've decided to post just about all of my writings, however banal or embarrassing, on this blog.  I'm also depositing pdf versions of most everything into Scribd as a backup to this blog, and complete copies (i.e., no blocking out of private names or particularly embarrassing details) into one other repository that is not available for public viewing.

While all items here have been posted in late 2011, with continued posting into 2012, I have decided to date each post to the date the item was originally created.  Letters, academic papers, photos, etc., are all posted with the date they were written or photographed.  When the exact original date is unknown but the year is known, the date of 1st January of that year is used.  When the exact date and year are both unknown, an estimation as to the original creation date is made and stated on the bottom of the item.  Occasionally you will see names, particularly identifying or embarrassing details and other information blocked out or  pseudonymized for the protection of others.

This is an immense project that will take time to complete.   Most of you who come across this blog will find this banal, boring, a waste of time, or just plain dumb.  But to me, these documents represent my life, my adventures, my journey as a person, friends and family still here and long gone... all precious to me.  I have faced one of the most traumatic experiences anyone can go through - losing just about everything they have worked for and built their entire adult lives - and I never want to go through that again.  Once was enough.