perfidy

One of the most maddening things about being a student of history (and I use the word student in the loosest possible sense) is the growing realization that not only is the past gone, much of it is unrecoverable. Historians talk about "facts" as though they were each and every one equal, as though the proceedings of a probate court in colonial Massachusetts are exactly as revealing of a sliver of the past as is a shard of pottery from Padua. This is of course absurd. Without rigorous research to establish context, neither one means a damn thing, and even after research two experts may come to diametrical interpretations. If this weren't the case, would we be still arguing whether slavery was the true root cause of the Civil War? (The answer by the way is "yes," with a "but.")

Worse yet, there's the sense that every day is slipping into the past in large part unrecorded, becoming part of a massive void that ought to- but does not- contain the rich and bloody chronicle of human experience. In this age of email and electronics, even the simple things that historians have always relied upon - like letters, diaries, and so forth - are used less and less in favor of electronic or disposable media that in five years -five years!! - may be unreadable to the casual researcher. We know who Samuel Pepys went to visit 343 years ago yesterday, but the preponderance of my extensive correspondence with my coblogger Buckethead is encoded in an email format proprietary to Juno/United Online.

Which is why projects like the Photovoice project of the Nature Conservancy are so wonderful.

That is all.