Newspapers

To wrap up my blog, I'll go back near the beginning of the semester when we talked about reading the Eternities and not the Times. To be honest, I'm not much of a newspaper reader. I prefer to hear the scoop, rather than scan the paper. However, while I was at work the other day (I work at the library in the AV room) stacking the day's papers on the racks, I couldn't help perusing some of the "articles." Mainly, I checked out comics, classifieds, and little blurbs about the high school. It was slightly addictive, like watching soaps. Throughout the year, I noticed my friends had little articles they had to go through on a daily basis- the police reports, the opinions page, and for some, the obituaries. While at work, I watched a family go through newspaper microfilm from the 1940s looking for nothing in particular, but just little snippets of interesting information. One girl printed out an article because she thought the clothes they wore were funny looking. Another girl was looking for household articles- which is the best recipe for. . . just really weird everyday stuff; and I guess, after pondering this awhile, that's where the appeal lies. It's the everyday that lasts forever. The common themes. Newspapers immortalize the mundane that we see each day, but evolves over time. Like the lists and lists of men who died in the Iliad. It's not about the individual who dies today or who died fifty years ago. It's that their lives are forever remembered and recorded. And in writing in our blogs, and taking pictures, and using facebook even, trying to do the same thing. We want to be remembered.