Archive for the ‘American Diaries’ Category

What You Can Do to Support a National Diary Archive

April 6, 2011

“What can those of us near you in heart but not geographically do to help?”

One of my readers asked this question and I will try to answer it, based on where the archive is now in its formation progress.

First of all, tell your friends about it, especially those who keep diaries.    You never know what connections might be made. If you teach journal writing, inform your students that there may soon be an archive.  If you keep an on-line diary you could ” blog” about the archive.  Everyone who keeps a journal should think about what will eventually become of them.

Assuming you are a diarist, stipulate in your will that you would like your diaries/journals to be donated to an archive upon your death and include at what point they may be open to the public.   If you wish to protect friends and family who are still living from reading what you truly felt about them, then consider stating how many years the diaries should remain closed.  You might allow staff of the archive to prepare them by transcribing them or digitizing.   You may want them to be available only to those visiting the actual location of the archive and for research purposes.   When an archive is opened in the United States, you could specify that archive in your will.

If you keep a diary/journal, give some thought to organizing and preserving it.  (See my post on that subject: “Now Where Did I Put That?”)  At the very least, put your name in each volume and where it was written.  If possible, create an index for each volume, each year, and the sum total of your work.   This will also make it easier for you to go back and re-read, which is an important benefit of this genre… an opportunity for self-insight and depth.

For all who would like to see a national diary archive I would recommend collecting diaries.  It is an expensive hobby so you might think of asking for “handwritten diaries” as presents, as I did.    Becoming the caretaker and  conservationist of someone else’s work gives you a sense of the importance of your own writing.   It might also show you how to improve your own writing.

If you begin your own collection of handwritten diaries you could transcribe them and put them online, or allow an archive to put them online.  The actual diaries could be kept by you and donated upon your death.

If you live near this archive of the future (Fort Collins, Colorado?) you are more than welcome to volunteer your time.

And, if none of the above works for you, you could always donate money.  So, keep watching our progress.

Posted in American Diaries, American Diary Archive, building a diary archive, collecting diaries, diaries, National Diary Archive | Leave a Comment »

“Where Did I Put That?”…On Organizing and Preserving Your Journals

March 5, 2011

While searching for entries in my journals on the subject of the weather, I became acutely aware of how much easier it would have been with a master index. The older I get the more my frustration increases with objects and information “lost.”  If you are over 50 years old you know what I’m talking about.

I have said before that when I began my journal in 1964 I had no goal in mind.  47 years later I know exactly how helpful it would have been to create an organizational plan.  To do so at this late stage is a task as daunting as trying to create order out of old photos thrown haphazardly in a box.

About seven years ago I began writing an index in the back of each volume.  This works for me because I like to write in full-sized books 8 ½” by 11” with plenty of room. Obviously the index only works if each entry has a subject and a date or page number to refer to. A fanciful title is ok only if the subject is clear.   When I am writing about people I put their name in the title, i.e. “John Q. Begins Writing a Novel.” Or I might say: “Garden – The Drought Continues,” or “Bees – Caught Two Swarms on the Same Day,” or “Cats – Annie Shows Tucker How to Catch a Mouse.”  If someone wanted to read about a single subject in my journal – say cats – they could skip all the rest of the boring stuff and go right to the cats.

I recognize that some people keep more of a “diary” than a “journal.”  Although the two words can be used interchangeably, I think of a diary as a simple record of the day’s activities (“up at 7 a.m.,” “had dinner with J.,” “went to a movie”) more than a description of those events. Even with that style of writing it would be useful to jot down the highlights, i.e. “April 4 – J. and I got married,”  “October 17 – new dog – ‘Chewbacca’.”

I cannot make this point too strongly — if you want to be able to find a particular experience later on or if you want to help a poor archivist of the future, then begin now to do the following:

In the cover of each volume write your name, the date, the city and state you live in and how old you are.  (If you write your name, address and phone number and then lose your diary, someone will be able to return it after they have read it and demanded a ransom.)

Either date each entry or number your pages.

Write a subject for each entry; a title can be a creative and humorous addition.

Create an index for each volume.

Create an index for all your journals.

Store them in chronological order in a plastic box, better yet, in an archival quality box. This will preserve them from water damage, pet and insect depredation, and dust.

Do not ever store them in a basement or an attic.  Try to keep the relative humidity below 65%; avoid high heat and light.

For more detailed information on preserving your diaries and journals I recommend searching the internet.

Just an added note here: As a long-time book dealer I have found these to be the worst culprits at ruining books: water, cigarette smoke, objects left in books (including fat bookmarks), and sunlight.  Letting books fall over on a shelf or not storing them flat can cause them to be permanently slanted.  That’s what bookends are for – they keep those books squarely upright.

Although I love to randomly re-read my journals, it is decidedly more satisfying to be able to find an entry when I need it.  As you continue writing you can’t always trust that aging memory to remember what you did when.

Now where did I leave my slippers?

Posted in American Diaries, Organizing and Preserving Your Journals | 1 Comment »

Whether Weather

February 27, 2011

Whether or not we should bother writing about the weather in our diaries, most of us do.  Whether the weather is a backdrop or an actual character in our writing probably says more about our connection with nature, or lack of anything else interesting to write about.  Unquestionably it influences our daily lives. Weather changes our moods, our activities, sometimes our lives.  I consider it a major player in Fate:  icy roads, sub-zero temperatures, the extremes of hurricanes, tornadoes and floods, create hardship and tragedy.

It is easy to forget how frail we become if we should lose the security of modern technology.  Experience one power outage in the dead of winter and you will have a new outlook.   Become trapped once by a change in the weather and you will be a wiser human.  Battle for your life against the elements and you will test your limits.   I  snort in disbelief when I see college students in flip-flops in sub-zero weather.  How naive they are, how trusting in their fate.

The older diaries in my possession all record the weather:

Josephine Conklin’s 1880 New York diary mentions the weather in the first sentence of every three sentence entry.  9-1-1880: ” It has been awful warm today and I have washed the colored clothes and baked bread…”  And 11-13-1880: “It has snowed some. I have baked pies and a cake and made applesauce…”

My great grandma, Olive Sophia Barnard,  says in her Wayne, Michigan diary on 7-3-1902: “Began raining last night and continued all night – heavy thunder showers, garden and Lena’s place entirely under water.  Cows had to swim on the flats this morning.  Took pictures of river.”

My great great grandma, Pamelia Pattison Chubb says in her 7-17-1873 entry (also from Wayne, Michigan): “Rain with high wind, picked berries made current wine.”  And 5-16-1873: “Rather pleasant but a cool wind, missed our usual rain, water getting rather low in cellar.”

Mrs. Herbert Abbott (I presume), from Coloma, Michigan, says on 6-5-1934: “Still very hot and dry.  Strawberry crop almost a failure.”  On 5-9-1934: “Terrible electric storm before we were up.  It struck our radio.”  Later she said, “got our radio fixed.” On 3-19-1934: “Washed a 2 week washing and did nearly all the ironing.  Quite a nice day to dry them.”

Obviously, in “the olden days,” weather had a more direct impact on a person’s life.  Too much rain or too little could change many things.  Today it is the farmers and gardeners who pay the most attention to the weather.

I looked for weather in my own journals.  Mostly it appears as a mood changer, occasionally as a phenomenon:   5-13-2004 “38 degrees this morning and snow is falling.  It turns to water as it touches the earth.  A quiet morning because of muffled sound from the heavy overcast sky and the dis-spirited animus of the living things.  We all want to sleep.  Zoe-cat is in my lap, croodling.  We are close, clinging against the weather-change back to winter.    On 3-5-2004  the farm was inside a snowglobe, a lovely sensation -  “This kind of snow quiets everyone, like a lullaby.  Even the young males do not race their cars down the street.”

Because I did not start an index until recently I will have to search for the day I witnessed the birth and ephemeral one minute life of a 30 foot snow-tornado only yards from where I stood.  This was a private showing – just between the universe and me.   Or the time it snowed rectangular snowflakes.  Or best of all, the day in Arizona that I saw the end of the rainbow.

I think too much weather can be boring, but how important an element in some  lives.   If nothing else is happening, at least the weather is.

Posted in American Diaries, how weather affects lives | Leave a Comment »

A Criminal Act

February 17, 2011

Since, as with most baby-boomers, my life is already crowded with too much material “stuff,”  I had the brilliant idea this past holiday season to ask for one thing for future “presents”:  handwritten diaries for the archive I hope to establish.    Santy Claws fulfilled my wish with two diaries purchased through eBay.  I mentioned them briefly in a blog.  Shortly afterward, I received an email from someone who had also purchased a diary by one of these women – Josephine Conklin of Mount Morris, Livingston County, New York.

My first reaction was a happy excitement.  We could transcribe the diaries and share.   This was followed by a second reaction of slow-burning rage at the eBay seller.  Why?  Because two thoughts occurred to me.   The owner of the other diary told me that the seller had even more by the same woman.  This means that the seller took the entire collection of Josephine Conklin’s diaries and split them up, possibly figuring she would make more money that way.

I don’t know about you, but as a diarist myself I think this is about the most horrible thing someone could do.   You can take someone’s artwork and sell each piece separately because each piece is a work unto itself, but a diary kept over many years is all part of the same work.   To mutilate it in this fashion is criminal.  Would anyone tear apart a canvas and sell off the fragments?  Would anyone take a book and sell it by the chapters?   A collection of journals is a complete tapestry of someone’s life…why, why destroy it?

It is true that both of the diaries I received were part of a larger collection.

One other thing disturbs me about these eBay sellers.  So many of the ads for handwritten diaries use these phrases:  “Amazing!!,” ” one-of-a-kind,”  “fabulous piece of Americana,” ” private window into American History.”   I don’t know why, but “amazing” disturbs me the most.  Mrs. Conklin was just recording her  ordinary day-to-day  activities.  What was  amazing was her dedication to that,  a point belittled by the behavior of the seller in destroying the integrity of the work by dividing it for increased profit.

Those advertising slogans remind me of circus barkers.  They cheapen the hallowed recording of someone’s life story.   “One of a kind” is also a lie when there is a box-full by the same diarist which are about to be torn apart.  Have these profiteers no conscience?

Posted in American Diaries, collecting diaries, selling diaries | Leave a Comment »

Favorite Published Diary: A Diary of the Century by Edward Robb Ellis

February 10, 2011

I would like to begin talking about a few of my favorite published diaries.  I think my absolute top choice would have to be A Diary of the Century by Edward Robb Ellis, which contains selections from the diary he wrote for over 70 years.  Ellis was born in 1911 and died in 1998.  He was a newspaper reporter, diarist, and author of several books, most notably on New York and on the Great Depression.  His diaries are now archived in the Fales Library/Special Collections  in New York City.  The published diary is available through Bookfinder.com

A Diary of the Century opens with an introduction by Pete Hamill, whose first paragraph is a simple and  extraordinarily beautiful description of why we write:

“The diarist has one essential goal: to freeze time.  With each entry, he or she says that on this day, a day that will never again occur in the history of the world, I lived.  I lived in this city or that town, upon which the sun shone warmly or the rain fell steadily.  I ate breakfast, walked city streets or country roads, drove a car or entered a subway.  I worked.  I dreamed.  Other human beings said witty things to me, or stupid things, or brutal things;  or I the same to them.  I laughed.  I wept.  The newspapers told me about the fevers of politics, distant wars, and who won the ballgames.  I experienced a work of art or read a novel or heard music that would not leave my mind.  I was bored.  I was afraid.  I was brave.  I was cowardly.  I endured a headache.  I broke my leg.  I loved someone who did not love me back.  I suffered the death of a loved one.  This day will never come again, but here, in this diary, I will have it forever.  Casual reader, listen:  I, too, have lived.”

Pete Hamill has been a novelist, essayist and journalist for over 40 years.  He is also a New Yorker.  (www.petehamill.com)

Although Edward Robb Ellis does not fall in the category of the “common” man and his diary has many entries about the rich and famous, I am drawn to the style of his diary,  perhaps because that is the type of diary I write.  Ellis writes like the reporter that he was – a record of the events of his life, with a background of the history taking place around him.  Unlike a reporter, he reveals his true feelings and emotions about those events, and says things about famous people that could not be printed in any paper.   I am especially intrigued with the deep insights that come to him through the discipline of writing for so many years.

In May of 1932, his elder sister tried to talk him out of keeping his journal. He wrote: “As usual, I’m going to ignore her advice.  What must be kept in mind is the fact that someone should have the courage and integrity to put down on paper all his life’s happenings precisely as they occurred.  It is my belief that the historian of the future will thank me.  In these pages he will not find a record of world deeds, mighty achievements, conquest.  What he will discover is the drama of the unfolding life of one individual, day after day after day.”

Posted in American Diaries, published diaries | Leave a Comment »

What’s Under the Covers?

February 3, 2011

As recently as a couple of years ago I was reading of a tragic murder with ties to my hometown.  The murderer was described as a “loner” with problems, “who kept a journal.”  The implication was that all persons who keep journals are immediately outside the realm of normal society and probably harboring all sorts of anti-social plots and extremist behavior.  Definitely people to mistrust.

There is a pervasive scorn for people who keep a journal, as if that automatically describes you as a secretive loner, self-absorbed and narcissistic, and—dare I say?—evil.  All the world distrusts the loner, the sheep which stands away from the flock, the individual who is not afraid to think for themselves, anyone who dresses or behaves in a manner that does not conform.

Certainly today’s diarist is being somewhat secretive.  Since virtually everything put on a computer is public information, the only privacy we have left is in our handwritten diaries.  Think about that.

Before the age of the personal computer, keeping diaries and writing letters was, if not commonplace, at least not suspect.  Up until the 1800s the only way to communicate, record and preserve information, or capture an image of what life was like, was to write it down or paint it.  (Photography evolved during the 1800s.)  The diaries I am reading from that era are short and simple records of the tapestry of daily life: “baked three pies, did washing, Herbert went into town, Mrs. Jones died,” and so on.  Many entries are only a sentence long.  Life was busy with work and I suspect there was little time for the “frivolity” of keeping a diary, especially in lower class homes.

The late 1800s witnessed the birth of contemporary psychology, and with it the gradual acceptance of emotions, (even the dark side of our nature), and a feeling of freedom to express them.  It would be interesting to research the change in the content of diaries from about 1900 to the 1960s.  Alongside the turmoil of the sixties and the “free love” and experimental happenings in this country, I believe the substance of journal writing changed drastically.  We were free not just to record what happened but how we felt about it.

I consider the late sixties and the seventies as the golden age of the journal.  The journals of Anais Nin were published and transformed the diary into an art form and a tool in self analysis.  They established the legitimacy of the diary as a genre of literature.  Tristine Rainer (who worked with Anais Nin) published The New Diary: How to use a journal for self guidance and expanded creativity.  Christina Baldwin published One to One: Self-Understanding Through Journal Writing.  The diary became an accepted, even encouraged, medium for deepening the experience of everyday life.

So, what has happened to the diarist since the advent of the personal computer and why are we once again scorned?  I see a movement toward “all things public” — we blog, we text, and it is all out there.  I think this is a step toward superficial and shallow thinking.  Undoubtedly there will be less self-examination or revelation of truth, both personal and otherwise.  What can you say when you know the boss could read it?

Despite the risk of being judged an anti-social personality, if you want to be free to express your innermost thoughts, to report life as you see it, I think it is best kept between the covers…of a journal.

Note:  Tristine Rainer and Christina Baldwin, two founding mothers of the golden age of the diary, are still actively involved in helping people tell their stories, write their memoirs, and deepen their lives with journal writing.  For more information visit:  Tristine Rainer’s – Center for Autobiographic Studies and Christina Baldwin’s – Storycatcher.

Posted in American Diaries, changing perceptions of people who keep journals | Leave a Comment »

Green With Envy

April 30, 2010

                                                 GREEN WITH ENVY

The local paper was not interested in printing my article on building a National Diary Archive in this city.   However, they have run feature stories about the still wildly popular hobby and lucrative business of scrapbooking.   

Counter-intuitively, a local store that sells blank books for journal writing would not hang a flyer about my journal workshop.  I have canceled journal workshops for lack of interest.  I have felt the breeze of doors slamming in my face regarding the idea of creating a National Diary Archive to preserve the thoughts and feelings and stories of the common person. 

Meanwhile, on April 14, Doug Gross of CNN wrote: “Twitter and the Library of Congress announced Wednesday that every public tweet posted since Twitter started in 2006 will be archived digitally by the federal library.”  Matt Raymond, the Library of Congress communications director, is seemingly ecstatic by what might be learned through this “wealth of data.”  And Twitter itself gushes: “It’s very exciting that tweets are becoming a part of history.” 

Jealousy washes over me.  Save imbecilic tweets and not the mindful outpourings of self-discovery, not the handwritten records of personal history, work, travels or relationships?   I wonder what wealth of information could be gleaned by saving all of our phone calls.  

How about if we save our “to do” lists?  Ah well, someone has already done that in the journaling world.  She collected her lists.  I suppose there was a revelation there, if nothing else it would have been that we spend a lot of time on things that are, in the end, not very important after all.   Given one hundred years our lists might be a fascinating thing…if you needed background for a novel. 

So, if tweets are valuable as part of the history of social culture, why not journals?  Or is it a matter of the ease with which tweets have been collected as opposed to the money and tenacious work of collecting handwritten journals?

Posted in American Diaries, American Diary Archive, Archiving Tweets Not Diaries? | Leave a Comment »

What’s In a Name?

April 30, 2010

What to call the new baby?

National Diary Archive, American Diary Archive, National Diary Repository, American Diary Repository, Diary Archive of America, National Diary Library, American Diary Library, etc. , etc., etc.   A veritable mad confusion of choices.

“Journal, ” a term I prefer, is too often confused with newspapers and magazines  (i.e. American Journal Archive). 

I like to tell people I keep a “journal”  and not a “diary” as I think “journal” conveys something more serious, something with depth and reflection beyond  a smattering of daily notes.   Truthfully, not all my entries have that much depth. 

I’ll be blunt about using the word “repository” in the name.  It reminds me of “suppository,” an altogether repugnant association in my mind.

Someone suggested going with “American” instead of “National,”  to distinguish it from all the other diary archives in the world.  Does anyone actually know of any other official diary archives? 

Any name suggestions are welcome.  Voting is encouraged.  Please don’t do the American thing…you know, what we are doing with baby names…Amairikan Dieree Arkive.

Posted in American Diaries, American Diary Archive | Leave a Comment »

Are Old Diaries Worth Saving?

March 25, 2010

There are many reasons why all diaries are worth saving…not just the diaries of the famous. 

Have you ever wondered what someone else was really thinking or feeling?  Have you ever thought how intriguing it would be to know what was going on in someone else’s life, to tear away the masks we wear?  What is it like to be someone the same as you, or someone completely different – of the opposite sex, a different race or a different period of history?   What might it be like to be a mother, a single-parent, a handicapped person, a soldier, to have cancer, to be raped, or to be so angry you would take a gun to school?    

There are many voyeuristic fascinations in reading a person’s diary.   We want to peek, we want to know what it was really like. Dr. Irving Finkel, who has collected 1,000 diaries to begin a British diary archive, says we all have something of a “beastly sneak” inside us.    We want to see the naked truth that most of us suspect is not available in newspapers or public media, or in history books, or even in buffed up autobiographies.  

Old diaries are an alluring glimpse into the past.   What  were the triumphs and tragedies and even the mundane details and concerns of everyday life?  What did people do before television, computers, and cell phones?  We might not think our diaries are very interesting, but given one hundred years even the commonplace acquires a mystique.  

For a point of view that is unavailable in a standard history text, I love reading excerpts from diaries written about a historic event.  After all, history is usually written by the winners who distort things to illuminate their own brilliance.   A diary, however, is uncensored.   

Whether we should preserve diaries may become a personal decision when you are the diarist.   If you are like me, you never intended to write so much.  I began my diary when I was 16.  I just kept on writing and suddenly it was 46 years later.  At my age it is time to answer questions about what should happen to all of my stuff when I die.  Because I write with complete honesty, and often use the diary as a catharsis, I would not want the members of my family or my friends to read it when I die.   At the same time, since I have put so many hours of work into these journals, I would hate to throw them away just as much as I would be devastated today if they were destroyed in fire or flood.  

Offering them to an archive is a way to preserve my life’s work.  I would be giving them to future generations, for whatever purpose emerges, in all of their ragged uselessness or hopeful value.  I think it’s a bit  like donating your body to science, only in this case it’s like donating your soul.  

One never knows if it will end up on the anatomy table or in the woods of a forensic body farm.  That’s a chance I’m willing to take.    

To my future unknown readers: “Salut!”

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Posted in American Diaries, Are Diaries Worth Saving? | 2 Comments »

We need a national diary archive!

March 3, 2010

 In an age where blogging is de rigueur for the young, and we baby boomers are approaching the end of the road, we are in danger of losing an important part of our cultural history: the diaries, journals and letters of the common person. 

As I write this I imagine hundreds of such treasures are being sent off to ignoble graves in the landfills of America, flung in the trash by unappreciative or overwhelmed heirs exclaiming: “look at all this junk Mom and Dad collected!” 

 Many people before me have envisioned a National Diary Archive – a safekeeping place where all those “common” folk (those of us who are not famous) might bequeath their diaries for the benefit or entertainment of unknown readers and researchers of the future.  Who, how and where are the major challenges.    

 Besides acquiring funding it will be necessary to find a location safe from natural disasters, accessible to the public, and suitable for long-term storage.  The archive must be capable of storing the diaries unopened until all persons in them are dead and will no longer be hurt by the diarist’s blunt honesty.  There will be a need for someone to work on cataloging and referencing these diaries for research when released to the public and possibly publishing them on the internet. 

 As you might have guessed, I have a personal connection with this cause and do shamelessly present myself for the position.  I began writing a diary in 1964 and have kept one (not always religiously) ever since then. The more than 50 volumes comprise a large part of my life’s work.  No, they are not great literature.  Neither do I want them to end up as compost. 

 I have arbitrarily chosen Fort Collins, Colorado, my hometown, as the ideal location in the heart of the country, for a national diary archive.  We seem basically disaster free and have a dry climate.

 I believe there is enough interest in old diaries and journals to support establishing an archive.  Recently on eBay a policeman’s log book from 1941 and a teen-ager’s diary from 1905 sold for over $50 each.  A schoolteacher’s uniquely “emotional” journal from 1872 – describing whippings and discipline problems – sold for $378.  One thing to remember is that what is commonplace today will in a hundred years or less become intriguingly, charmingly vintage. 

 Ultimately, we cannot imagine what use these diaries and letters will have in a distant time or what impact the small tidbits or deeply examined lives will have on future generations.  But if we don’t save them now, we will never know.

For comments, ideas, or donations of diaries and journals, contact Cynthia at bluemoon47@qwestoffice.net

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Posted in American Diaries, American Diary Archive, Are Diaries Worth Saving?, Journaling | 3 Comments »

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