Meriwether Blogger

A couple of months ago I finished a Undaunted Courage, a biography of Meriwether Lewis. Probably the heaviest reading I've done in a while. It took close to 2 months to finish, reading it slow to somehow grasp the arduousness of the Lewis and Clark expedition. Much of the record comes from the journals kept by the captains and one private. Letters were a second source to gain insight on Capt. Lewis' life. I guess journals were more common in past times. And the messages from the post were valuable goods that brought news of loved ones' health, activities, and thoughts.

Today, a majority of our letters has been reduced to e-mails and facebook. They fly as electrons through processors and waves in the air. Your inbox becomes full and you delete it all. A text message can be instantly responded to. Facebook lets everyone who cares to look know what your status is. Why send a postcard from your adventure when you can just email the photos you've taken. Letter writing has been resigned to the hopless romantics. So, much of today's communication is lost, deleted because of the glut of information.

Journaling has taken on a new life though. This blog is a journal. Through it I relate my thoughts and you might be able to extrapolate what is happening in my life. This all so public information may never die. Unless the internet crashes. In a hundred years or more, the historians will be fishing through these blogs, try to figure out exactly who was the author to gain perspective of life as we entered the 21st century. They will sift through travel journals, political commentary, and social commentary to try to explain why we did or didn't destroy the environment, pass a bill or two, and why we drank so much caffeine. They will read one guy's blog about his affair with a Native American and then wonder why his wife left him. Maybe, they'll see a moral collapse amidst all of this data that is being stored, and wonder why we didn't see it ourselves since the words were right in front of us. Those generations will see a wistful people of non-absolutes in the name of political correctness, a disposable trendy culture that didn't bother to save correspondence and instead bank collective anonymous journals that recorded far out thoughts that no one reads or even matter.

namaste
vaya con Dios