⚡ September 15, 2014
Scanning in the Years 🎂
I wonder if it’s begun to dawn on other baby boomers with a conscience just what a big task lies before us right now. I realize that we brought this upon ourselves, and I take full responsibility, but lordy Jayne-hat, are we looking at a mountain. I will explain.
Right now, I am trying to make a bridge between my generation and the generation of children just coming into mental bloom. In order to do this, ladies and germs, we have to introduce the idea of scanning. Of the digital divide. Of pixeling all my ephemera. God, that’s such a flimsy light phrase for such an onerous task.
First, you have to find the photos and take them down from their basket or box. Done, and done. Then, you have to laboriously put them four at a time on the scanner bed, being careful not to get any crumbs or dust onto the glass as you work. Otherwise, you’d have to photoshop out the bacon bits when you get to the next step. And oh my, yes. There is a next step.
I may have to join that most dreaded of covens: the scrapbookers. They have a swirling cauldron of temptations to lure you into their corner shop at the mall, and one little purchase always leads to another. So much glitter and tidy little heart-shaped punchers and stuff I can’t even tell you about because I try to never go to those sites or kiosks full of stampers and fey little flower stickers, scented and embossed. I could live in this world … until they try to add some words … and then it all comes to a screeching halt for me.
Their words are seldom any good. They are cheap and unoriginal, sprinkled like any other decoration across the page; just another copy of something you’ve already read a million times. My generation stopped taking Hallmark cards and their sentiments seriously, no matter who sent them. Really. There are people who actually underline the silly lightweight sentences between the pretty pictures. It’s always better to stick with Lorem Ipsum. It never fails to intrigue.
Sigh. I am scanning in the photos from my baskets of decades. I am in the middle of the seventies, so I’m sort of glum. That college degree, so desired, didn’t really amount to anything. I was not able to wield it, I guess, because I was ten years too old for the conditioning to stick. I remain a poor person with good library skills, and that is all.
And now with the internet, everyone within reach of a modem and a mouse can have almost as much access as any ivy-league student. You already know that. But then look at your process for finding me and this great writing blog and all of that. Now that everything is being dumped down the bottomless well of deep space, there is only one way to navigate the rising tide: you must trust your instincts, hold your nose, and dive. You will search and find and bookmark! You will follow-up!
You will learn something new each and every day. There’s no longer any bar to learning Japanese! Or how to survive in the wild or how to fold your t-shirts so they don’t fall over and look like a rainbow in your drawers. I am tempted. Until I embed the video, here’s the link.
And now, I will go back to scanning. More on this thought later. The fall is upon me and I am gathering everything! Be still, my constant brain. 🐔