Thoughts on mementos

[da]

Yesterday when I was sorting through papers in a Sudafed haze, I took a few moments to re-read some of the letters I sent when I was in school. The most fun one was a pissed-off letter to Chase Bank on the resolution of a credit-report mistake, but it was also fun to find the letter I sent Cornell's library asking forgiveness concerning fees to replace two books which were stolen from my dad's truck on a trip to NYC (the fines were waived).

dawn_guy pointed me at unclutterer, which has a recent article, What does it mean to ‘honor’ mementos?

This is an interesting and relevant question for me. I would like to do something with my crate of letters, cards and other paper mementos. I like the idea of browsing them every once in a while; and a crate is not really the most suitable way to browse them without damaging them. Scrapbooking is a scarily-obsessive hobby, or at least it is rather dominated by people who seems obsessively scary. (Also, would I sort theatre and concert tickets into a binder of their own, or mix them in with other ephemera by date?... Such questions to obsess over! I just don't have time!)

Perhaps there's a digital form of preservation that doesn't feel time-wasting or obsessive. I haven't come to any conclusions here, but I'm curious if this is something you've come to peace with.

melted_snowball is much less sentimental than I am. And I'm sentimental about a wider range of stuff. Neither of us are "right" and I don't think we're incompatibly different about this. But it does seem to come to a head with magazines from *mumble* months ago that I've not gotten around to reading and electronics I might fix.

I just unsubscribed from Linux Journal (for a few reasons- including the fact that they run terrible sexist ads, but also because I haven't really read any of the last six issues). I've tossed the tape-eating VCR that was sitting in the closet. d. was, I think rightfully, a bit miffed that I had kept it around. If you knew his father moved 800 boxes of stuff from Cortland to Long Island, including boxes they hadn't opened in over 20 years, you'd probably see his point. And I do.

And it is quite gratifying to lighten the load, especially if it includes truly accepting my limitations. ("I'll never be good enough at micro-soldering to fix that headphone cable satisfactorily. And that's OK.")

A few years ago I tossed the crushed pair of black crushed velvet high heel pumps that were given to me by my friend Arlene for my first time to see the live stage show of Rocky Horror at Risley Hall at Cornell. Partly I wish I'd kept the shoes, even though they looked awful. Or, maybe that's really a feeling of regret I'd not treated them better.

Comments

[earthling177.livejournal.com]

I gotta say, I'm used to ads everywhere in Brazil using sex to sell, but that particular ad is too much even for me, it went very quickly from tasteless to offensive -- I wonder if it's the "low-production" values like dawn_guy mentions or if it's just way past even the relatively permissive society I grew up in. Yuck.

Anyway. I'm not particularly sentimental when it comes to stuff in general, so I don't really keep mementos or scrapbook etc. But another side effect of growing up in Brazil is an obsession with paperwork: one is never sure when one is gonna need proof of something and/or when government/business will try to screw one over. So I tend to photocopy originals before I mail them, and I'm particularly irked when rebates ask for the originals, if they get lost in the mail, what will I do? Anyhow, the last couple of times I was too lazy to get out of the house just to make photocopies of receipts and other forms, so I scanned the stuff and printed them. I have to say, the copies came out so well, that I sent the copies instead of the original forms. People I showed the copies to had a very hard time even picking which one was the form I signed and which one was the copy. And they paid my rebates too, so I suppose it counted as "original". Try to scan a couple of the letters (color scan, try 300 and 600 bits/inch) and then color print to see if you mind the copy, if you don't, you can dispose of the originals and make a few backup copies on CDs or DVDs. Good luck!