Several months ago, I read Becoming Justice Blackmun, an interesting sort-of biography of Blackmun (the Supreme Court Justice who penned Roe v. Wade, among other distinctions) based largely on his personal papers. In an unusual move, Blackmun decreed that his papers should be released to the Library of Congress only 5 years after his death (many justices want much more time between their death and the release of their papers,) so there was quite a swirl of attention around their release a few years ago and the resulting book.
Blackmun is interesting for a lot of reasons that I won’t go into here (you are all capable wikipedia searchers, I’m sure,) but one small note in the book really struck me. Among the voluminous archives in the Library of Congress was a sort of diary that Blackmun kept for his whole life. Rather than a day to day narrative of the details of his activities, the diary was more of a record of significant events- he’d jot down career accomplishments, birthdays, weddings, significant court decisions, etc. What was most interesting to me was that in addition to recording these personal events (birth of a child, death of a friend) he also recorded events of national significance (wars, deaths of world leaders, etc.)
I thought this was a really cool idea: it would be very interesting, I thought, to look back 5, 10, 20 years later and see both what I had been up to personally and what had been going on in the world at the time. What was going on in my life at the time of the 2008 election, for example? What world events occurred around the time I got married?
So inspired was I by this idea, I started a similar record of significant events for myself. I’ll admit- I am struggling a little. What to put in it? What is significant enough to make the book? I don’t want it to be limited to only the Most Significant Events Ever, because I’m likely to sort of remember those anyway, but I don’t want to crowd it with totally minor mundane details, either. And the world events thing has proven to be much trickier than I would have imagined. Blackmun had the advantage of writing some of the most significant Supreme Court cases of the day. I do not. And just looking to what stories have garnered lots of news media attention is not necessarily a good way to determine what to include. I’m pretty sure, for example, that in 20 years I do not need to remember the ongoing, never-ending search for Stacy Peterson (sad as it is,) and the controversy swirling around her douchebag husband, despite the fact that that one story has dominated the news around here for MONTHS. I am left to decide: is this current newsy event something worth noting, or will I look back and say “good grief, why did I think it was worth noting that the mayor of Detroit got indicted?”
So I’m interested: if you had to pick one thing that had happened and been in the news in the past month to put in a journal, with the idea that years from now you would look back at it and it would give you an insight into the state of the city/state/country/world at the time, what event would you choose?
the dem primary race would have to go in there, i think.. um… castro resigning in feb? spitzer scandal in nyc? subprime mortgage crash / economy misgivings? i have no idea..
I’ll have to go with Stanford getting screwed by the refs to lose the Pac-10 championship… kidding.
Probably Bear Stearns getting bailed out by the Fed and JP Morgan (as a mark of the entire mortgage fiasco) or the Obama speech on race last week (as a follow-up to another political race torn down to the lowest common denominator).
That is a really, really hard question. Luckily you don’t have to pick just one. I would talk about Elliot Spitzer and sex scandals because I think they are really interesting and reflective of societal ridiculousness. tBut then there’s other stuff I find fascinating likehe obsession with blaming flu vaccines for rising autism rates. I would talk about that too.
Cool idea!
Well, clearly if I were you, I would put MEET NILSA AND JESS (yes, in caps) because that is a monumental and historic moment. Seriously!
Hahaha. OK, you’re talking about something on a national level? How about Obama’s speech on race. I think it not only will remind you of the Democratic race, but it’s a pretty clear indicator of what is still at issue with and in our country.
Democratic race, hands down.
“4,000 people DIED?” That’s what I heard one guy say to another guy with a camera on the train earlier this week. The guy with the camera was filming war protests in SF. Just right down what’s important to you. If I were doing your project, I’d right down about that woman who threw her kids over into the SF Bay and they all died, because I saw policemen running for that, and I’d never seen cops run in real life.
I am just going to breeze right past your question and go to a PRODUCT RECOMMENDATION! Do you have a Borders bookstore near you? Because in their Bargain section (perpetually) is a book called “Days to Remember: A Journal of Lifetime Events.” Each page is marked with a date, such as April 2—no year. Just a bunch of lines. So what you do is, if anything happens, you open the book to the day it happened on, write the year first and then what happened. On one line. See, then you can open to, say, April 2, and see that in 1997 your grandmother died, and in 1999 you adopted a kitten, and in 2000 there was some big news thing, and in 2003 you went to a ball game and caught a ball or something.
You can also do this yourself with a 3-ring binder and 366 pages of notebook paper, but I like the book.
My explanation, it looks weird to me. I will do a sample page.
April 2
1997 Grandma Morris died.
1999 Adopted Milly from Human Society.
2000 Big news thing, detail detail.
2003 Team A vs. Team B–caught ball!
Like that, but for years and years.