I have started a scrap book for my mother, one owed to her some time ago, which will hopefully deter my future murder, as bad daughter, who failed to make her a scrap book, when I made two for 2 other relatives.
Scrap booking is how I record our own family photos and histories, we have several such books, and now I am teaching the kids how to do this. This is also one way we take the holidays back, via home made gifts.
If you have a beloved relative, who has everything, or who isn't into electronics, and you don't know what to get them. Scrapbook. If you take care, and use archival quality products, you can give them something very personal and valuable.
I think it's clear at this point, that I don't entirely trust the internet to save anything I want saved. That if I were to put two blogs up, one about me partying hard, and another about political disappointments, that the one that would survive, that would come back to haunt me would be the one about me vomiting in my own shoes.
I know that saving things to disc is also iffy. That eventually the information erodes, and then there are just viruses and glitches, or even some day an EMP that could wipe things out temporarily.
So to me, scrapbooks are way more than just photo albums. But not because of my distrust of electronic media. Scrapbooks are symbols of the time and effort spent to make something that lasts. Scrapbooks like personal, handwritten letters and journals, are treasure troves of history, windows into a family or an individual's thoughts and predilections.
So I save a lot more than just family photos in our scrapbooks. I include pictures of wildlife too, and of the land in various seasons. I know that if nothing changes, that our climate will transform all that we think of as normal, in the natural world, into an entirely new something. In my art, I have saved an image of what used to be, not just fashionwise, or in terms of architecture, but in nature, and climate. These are our time capsules.
I know that while in college, I had the privilege of reading the personal journals of people who lived through various historical events. These journals gave great insight into everyday life. This was quite a departure from the ivory tower of history books [not that those weren't important]. Because these documents gave context, they presented perceptions that might be ignored for a variety of reasons.
So I scrapbook. These are my personal cave paintings. These are my equivalent of a hand made quilt, only my quilt is made of photographs instead of fat quarters.
Speaking of family history, I learned something new recently. Actually a couple of things.
Both my mother and father lived in and through the second Dust Bowl in the 1950s. One parent lived in the Texas Panhandle and the other lived in Central Oklahoma. The reason I figured this out:
I was always taught to put glasses lip down in the cupboard. And many times people have commented that it was a strange way to put the dishes up. And while watching an OETA special on the Dust Bowl during the Depression [because there were two] a man said that people got onto him later in life for putting his glasses lip down in the cupboard.
I never had an answer for people until that moment, WHY we might store our drinking glasses in that manner. When I learned there was a second Dust Bowl in the 50s, then I realized that this wasn't just a habit passed on from grand parents and great grandparents, but something my parents learned to do as a matter of necessity as well. Here is one reference to the second Dust Bowl from NPR.
This is a bit of trivia I intend to add to our scrap books. My mother told me, her grandmother grew tomatoes, with good results, during that time by hand watering them one cup of water each plant. That sounds insane to me. But I think it would make a good experiment for us this next summer, since we will have a nicely watered control in the back garden.
My mother told me that she wore dresses, back then, she was a child. And that the blowing dust would sting, as it hit her bare legs, and that she would jump up and down, bending her knees as she jumped, to find temporary relief from the biting sand on the wind.
The people who lived through the drought remember dust storms as bad or worse than those of the Dust Bowl days in the 1930s.
They speak of fearsome dust storms that turned noonday into night, so dark that schoolteachers led their students to the buses hand in hand so they wouldn't get lost. The dust storms were so powerful that the grit abraded the paint clean off the license plates on cars unfortunate enough to drive through them. NPR
We are going on 2 years now, almost three, with the very hot, death valley temperatures in the Summer, and the dearth of flowers and rain. I was in Edmond recently, and I noticed red bud tree plantings in a parking lot. Their bark falling off in sheets, signs that these trees were killed by fungus. A fungus that attacks when the tree's vascular system shuts down in extreme heat. The same fungus that killed the huge elm in a back pasture, as well as some of our mature oaks. You can't water these trees to save them. It's too hot for them to take up water. They simply shut down. Heat Stroke for a tree, I suppose is how some could describe it. Weeks of 99 and 100 degree nights and days over 104--often well over a 108. Add that with the heat island effect in a parking lot and you have dead trees. Even native species cannot take that level of abuse.
Luckily, so far, no Haboobs in Central Oklahoma. We did have a dust storm cause accidents and close down the interstate in N. Oklahoma and S. Kansas though.
A massive dust storm swirling reddish-brown clouds over northern Oklahoma triggered a multi-vehicle accident along a major interstate Thursday, forcing police to shut down part of the heavily traveled roadway amid near blackout conditions...The area has suffered through an extended drought and many farmers had recently loosened the soil while preparing for the winter wheat season. USA Today
You can also watch a video of the storm here.
You can even see this particular storm from space, check out this NASA photograph.
The Forestry service says that tree-windbreaks are the answer to prevent this. I agree, but what kind of trees do you grow that can withstand the new drought and temperature extremes we see in the state now?
I can remember as a child that we often got dust storms, but nothing like what this story describes. You cannot avoid it, in a place that is so windy all the time, and flat. You would think that we had learned all our lessons, to avoid having to go through this again, at least due to human agencies.
But no.
20 Signs America is Headed for Another Dust Bowl: Business Insider.
The depletion of the Ogallala Aquifer and the extended period of extreme drought are the top two reasons cited for this concern. We would rather frack with our water than drink it or use it to grow crops. I have found stories going back to 2011, that expressed concerns that we could have another Dust Bowl in the region.
I can just imagine some deranged oilman out there praying with his church that the Central US become the Next Saudi Arabia--Well careful what you wish for Bubba!
According to one study, loss of groundwater means a loss of a mitigating factor which increases the effectiveness of rain, to recharge drought stricken land.
My mother told me the dust storms were so bad, that the blowing dust and dirt would bury the chicken coops. And that the property owners would simply build on top of the buried coops.
Hopefully these won't be the sorts of items I have to put in our scrap books. We would probably just have to move. This is what caused the mass migration of Okies to California during the Depression. You can't grow food, or keep a working farm under these conditions. And your children die of lung ailments. It's easier to loose all your worldly possessions by moving, than it is to stay and just give up on life altogether.
What historical happenings end up in your scrap books? What do you chronicle?