Bump

 

Rescuing Unwanted Diaries - from the you tubes

Irving Finkel of the British Museum posts on YouTube, mostly on cuneiform related topics. He posted one video about unwanted diaries . Due to his lobbying, the Bishopsgate Institute will accept donations of personal diaries, no matter who they're from. I'm re-listening to the video to be sure that they will take non-UK diaries.

Ah! He hasn't said so outright, but one of the diaries he presents as an example is from America. So I could, theoretically, send Grandma Lil's diaries to Bishopsgate. Reading them depresses me. I may mention why later.

The Great Diary Project has a website:  https://www.thegreatdiaryproject.co.uk/. Their address is: 230 Bishopsgate, Spitalfields, London EC2M 4QH, United Kingdom.

He makes a point of stressing that none of the institute's diaries were written by politicians.

Book Case Organizing

 I'm not even going to check to see how many years it's been. I am currently bringing books up from the basement. The books were put in boxes in the basement when we painted my room. I still don't have things the way I want them in that room, but the painting is done and the new windows have been finished. I have a murphy bed that's almost in the right place and a teak dresser that I really like.

I also have the two-tier bookcase that Grandpa B built. It had to be painted, too. It's oddly shaped and maybe not in the right place. That may be why the books stayed in the basement for as long as they did.

I brought up a handful of books from the basement and decided to donate half of them. Then, because the books in the bedroom bookcase need to be sorted before more basement books come up, I started sorting the books in the dining room book case. Not that we have a table and chairs in the dining room - what we have is a couple of desks, three sets of book cases, a filing cabinet, and some shelves.

There was a reason for shifting to the dining room book case. There really was. It wasn't just because I got distracted or gave up on the bedroom book case. It was because I decided that 1) a couple of the basement books really should go in the dining room/computer room, 2) if I was in a mood to get rid of books, that book case was really full and could use some pruning, so 3) I started sorting through the dining room book case to see what should go into the bedroom and what I could stand to do without.

I have half a box full of books to go away and a wastebasket full of papers to recycle. I also have a stack of stuff I've deliberately collected that need to find a place in my bedroom closet. Organizing always makes more work.

But the reason I'm writing is that I'm about to throw a few things out that I feel guilty about tossing. I could take pictures first, but so far they're things that I'm that stuck on. 

I'll be 65 in January, so I don't really need to keep high school report cards. 1971 may sound like the olden days but I really don't need physical evidence that I once got: a B in PE, a B in trigonometry, an A in American Literature, a B in French II, and an A in Chemistry. 

I'm also going to toss the Commencement 1969 program from Harbor Jr. College. Mom got her AA that year. I'm proud of her for going back and getting that. In '69 I was in junior high, so it was a good example for us.

Oh, my. Here are some clippings. Yeah, those are worth scanning and keeping the scans. They're from the 80s and older and peripheral relatives may enjoy them. So even though they're yellow, they won't be tossed until they're scanned. 

Sigh. Christmas letters. I admire people who can remember what they did all year and line it up like that. I'm going to toss them, though. I'll feel really guilty, but they're going. 

Found a letter from my sister that I'm going to keep. Here's her Certificate of Birth from the hospital. Don't know how I got that. Possibly from clearing out Mom's place. OMG! It's got her footprints on it and Mom's thumbprint. I'll have to send it to her. And she got a Youth Fitness Achievement Award in 1972. 

There are some things from my other sister that I may send to her, too. She probably doesn't need her report cards, but there are some awards that  she might like. A bunch of them were related to FFA (Future Farmers of America). Dang, that's her HS diploma. 

This is how organizing gets bogged down. Mom things. Dad things. Dang - Dad's birth certificate. A hospital log printed in the Torrance Herald with my Mom's name and my date of birth. I can toss that. My HS diploma - may keep that. Retention Basin Design Standards - that can go.

The class photos from elementary school can be sent to whoever is in them. May scan them first, but I already have scans of the individual photos, so maybe not. And I have to file mine.

But that's a few more things out of the house and a whole shelf empty in the dining room book case. Sadly, there's a bunch of stuff now on my desk to be sorted and filed. Pity I don't have tomorrow off, or I could keep going. Not that I'm not going to keep going now. I'm just not going to get much else up from the basement today. 

My last post was three and a half years ago.

My last post was three and a half years ago.


I feel a little guilty about that.  


More later.





Maybe.

Ah, The Smell of Mildew

There would have been less guilt if I'd just gone through the box and tossed things.  But, no.  It wasn't handled that straightforwardly.  In one of the more recent iterations of clearing the garage, we found a box of old school things.  It looked at first like is was mostly my Dear Son's things.  

Did I toss it?  No.  I had set it aside, with the idea of going through it to at least see what was there.  It was in a cardboard box.  It got left on the back porch and ignored for weeks.  Minor guilt every time I went out the back door.  Then it got rained on.  I hauled it in to dry.  Shoved it into the front room for "someone" to go through.  I knew it should be me, but was sort of hoping someone else would deal with it.  A few weeks ago it someone shoved it into my bedroom during a "someone's coming over" clear of the front room.  

I shoved it into a corner.  Now I'm tired of it being there.  So there will be tossing.

It's mostly Dear Son's old school reports.  There are reports on:

Pandas
New York
Homo Sapiens
Walt Disney
Yellowstone


There's a quarterly report from his GATE class, report cards (sheets, really), letters to me, and art assignments from elementary school. 

Ah, there are things from Beloved Son as well.  I feel worst about that.

His high school football pictures and letters.  Fortunately, those are in ziplock bags.  No mildew. 

A file full of grade reports, school newsletters, art work, and citations.  Also letters to me

Reports on:

Richard Byrd 
The Solar System
The Beaver
Mexico
Alaska

At least one manila folder of Eldest Son's things.  There are letters to me, worksheets from the second and fourth grades, his high school graduation announcement, 

There are also envelopes of my old taxes and the original loan papers for the house.  The taxes are old enough to go. I have a different loan, now, so most of the loan papers can go.  I may want to keep the original inspection report.  I'll read it and see.

About five sixths of the old school things can go.  And I can mail most of the things for Beloved Son to him.  I'll take photos or scans of the school certificates that have their pictures on it.  Pictures are good.  

The box can be recycled with the rest of it.  

Go Through Those Boxes More Than Once: Abe the Newsboy

I successfully threw out a political pamphlet in the last post to this blog.  Now I'm hesitating over getting rid of a book.  It's full title:  Life Story of Abe the Newsboy, Hero of a Thousand Fights.

This is apparently a vaguely historical book, and you know that I have a weakness for the vaguely historical.  It's an autobiography of a Navy boxer and it has pictures of Presidents in it.  It was also self published, which usually didn't work out that well, back in the day.  Did I hear you ask which day?

Looks like the first edition was in 1930.  That would be the year my Dad was born.  This is my Grandma's copy, which she obviously bought after 1960.  She had a thing for sailors.  She married . . . .  Well, let's just say that Dad's dad was a sailor when they were first married.  So it fits in with family history.

I've looked it up online, and the book is referred to as "important".  It's also called one of the first memoirs, which is a crock, and the exact same wording has spread to many internet sites.

It sells for as little as $2.49, plus shipping, and can be downloaded for free in PDF, ePUB, or mp3 from a place called bookalist.  It downloads as a passworded file, then you have to log onto another site and download the password.  That's where I got cautious.  So I can't tell you if the site is fishy or not.  Can anyone vouch that this is a safe site?

I can't find a review of it online, although it is on the recommended reading list at jewishboxers.com.  Amazon has a bunch of consignment copies for sale, but, again, no review.  The first few sentences were very 1930's sincere.  Part of me wants to read it just to write the review.  The rest of me knows that I have many more important things that I'm behind on.  

Oh, man.  Someone presented a paper on it.  Mangun, Kimberley. “Abe ‘the Newsboy’ Hollandersky: Self-Promotion and the Hero Myth in Newspaper Coverage of the Jewish Boxer.” Paper presented at the American Journalism Historians Association National Conference, New Orleans, September 2013.

Sigh.  It's starting to look like it's going to end up back in the box.  My only excuse is that I can use it as a prop to talk about those relative that have gone before us.  If I actually manage to get it out of the house (or to post a review), I'll post it here.  

[ETA:  To make up for my indecision regarding Abe, I've tossed The Salem Frigate by John Jennings.  It's listed as an adventure romance and you can get it for $0.13 on Amazon.]

Go Through Those Boxes More Than Once: Goodbye Mr. Max Rafferty

My Beloved Son and his wife (who are expecting - yay!) go through everything they own twice a year to see what they can throw or give away.  You can see the results of the constant pruning in their house, which is spacious and easy to clean.  This is not a thing that either of them learned from me.  

I am trying, though.  Since I'm not at their level, yet, I sometimes prune in stages.  Recently we did some organizing in the garage and I brought in three boxes to sort through.  From the look of them, it's all family stuff.  When I put the boxes away, I think they were meant to be deep storage.  Today, I'm looking at them as being full of things that I couldn't bring myself to throw away, yet.  And I'm giving myself dispensation to prune in stages.  If it ends up being one box going back in the garage, I'll consider it a big step forward.  And who knows, maybe that's what I intended to happen when I stored them.

What's in the boxes?  Well, I found one thing I can let go.

Not sure where this came from.  I had one uncle who did political networking that was job-related, and my father was more than a little right wing.  

Either one of them would occasionally get involved in political mailings, so this could have been a leftover from one of those.  The lack of address means that it wasn't mailed to Dad, but he could have picked it up when visiting a local campaign headquarters or it could have been passed out in a door to door campaign.  

It wasn't a campaign that Dad was particularly active in, or I'd remember the candidate.  As it is, the name is only vaguely familiar, and I'd have to look him up to see if he won or lost.

I suppose I could make a comment on 'the hoax of "forced housing"' vs 'housing equality', but I'm not feeling the need at the moment.  For now I'll just shrug and say it was the sixties.

I have no clue why this political pamphlet was in my Mother's things.  I only know that I hung onto it because it felt vaguely historical.  I have a weakness for that.

So, if anyone finds any historical value in this little, unmailed piece of paper, you have these images to download.  Take them with my blessing.  Unlike the cooking pamphlet, I didn't hold onto this one to see if anyone else wanted it, though.  The paper version has been recycled.  

Recycling wasn't one of Max's issues, but then it was the sixties.  

I could decide that it's sad that it took all this effort to throw out one piece of paper, but I won't.  I'm enjoying this little effort at memorializing my life and trash.  Goodbye, Mr. Rafferty.