I treated myself to a couple of purchases this vacation.  One of them was a book and two cd set from the label Dust-to-Digital.  They release historic music from the US and around the world.  They also make beautiful sets of music and books.  My introduction to them was a Christmas cd hubby gave me a few years ago.   It has songs from the 1910's to the 1950's, from US blues, jazz, and gospel to Carribean, Italian, and Ukrainian.  What a find!  Bessie Smith, Leadbelly, Lighting Hopkins....  Real gems.

So I had a lot of trouble picking and went with "I Listen to The Wind That Obliterates My Traces" which is a book of vernacular photographs of people with their musical instruments.  The author put this together from his collection of old photographs.  They include a variety of processes - tintypes, cabinet cards, ambrotypes, and such.  The music dates to no more recent than the 1950's.  The photos - so far - look to date from the mid 1800's and on.  What a treasure trove of history.  I keep thinking of a strange picture I found among my grandma's stuff.  It looks to be in a rural setting and is a bunch of people with instruments.  It could be Hungary or West Virginia or Ohio or who knows where (Great Grandpa was a miner and they moved a bit before settling in Brooklyn).   Dad does not recognize anyone and never saw the image before.  It is a mystery, like most of the images in this book.

I am devouring it slowly.  I am also being bitten by a certain bug again.  The bug that makes me want to go to Somerville and to that certain antique shop with the big basement and buy up a ton of old forgotten pictures.  I guess it runs right in line with my love for graveyard and gravestone preservation.  I have a hard time with thinking about all theses forgotten people and feel like I am keeping the spirits alive in some way.  (I also resolve to get off my butt and visit the forgotten graves from my paternal side this year, but that's a whole other issue.)

Now, of course my teacher brain never takes a vacation.  So I keep thinking that there must be a way to tie this in to a project assignment.  The kids live in such a throwaway culture.  Heck, people rarely even print the images they take nowadays and rarely buy actual music, like vinyl or cd's.  The left behind music and photographic images are the only traces left by these people from the 1800's and on.  But what are we leaving behind?  Digital image and music files?  Will the technology to read, listen, and view this stuff even exist when we are gone?  And then what?  How do people learn about and from us if we leave no trace behind?

I struggle with this a great deal.  I mean, I know I leave no mark on the world when I am gone.  But the remnants of others before me have had a profound impact.  If all that is left behind is a bunch of intangible, technologically dated stuff, how will anyone be affected the way I have been affected by those before me?  And how can I take these thoughts and have them coalesce into a meaningful thing for my students?  Oof....