Surround yourself with beauty and remembrances of beauty. They are worth the cost.

Why do I blog. Someone said on TV this week that never have so many said so much about so little to be read by so few. He was describing the blogging phenomenon. But he doesn't understand why I am blogging. I remember a few years ago we were at a cousin's house who read us a letter from the mid-1800's that they had discovered in an old out building. It was from an progenitor who had moved out west, writing back home to his parents. It was beautiful to read. He had contacted that wing of the family and sent them a copy of letter written by their ancestor. Oddly, they responded by sending back a copy of the answer to that same letter. It had been preserved in their family.

My grandfathers died before I had a chance to hear them speaking and they wrote nothing for me to read. I have always felt cut-off from them (and my grandmothers). I did interact with the grandmothers, but I was only 5 when one died, and the other was not in her right mind when I knew her. So there is nothing left to me from just a generation past. I have only one keepsake from them all, a little red cloth fan that Grandmother Altman used at times. It is worn from use so I know that she held it often. What I would not give to have 500 conversations with them, even one-sided ones where I only listened to them, in order to help me understand who they were, and how I came from them to be who I am. Where does the music come from? Where the attention to detail? Where the compassion for others? Where the political point of view? How did they contribute to making me. And what of their fathers and mothers?

Everyone should be blogging and publishing, leaving a reminder of today for the future.