Museums and Archives

I was going to write about being a consultant today, but I went to a meeting this afternoon with my good friend, Mal, about archiving and museums in schools. We are both recently retired from St Nicholas, where both of us have worked for yonks, and we have been "given permission" to sort out the archives at the relatively new (21 years old) school. Not sure that it is really my dream job, but doing it with Mal will be fun and who knows what mayhem we could cause! Name photos incorrectly?

But my blog today isn't about the meeting (although some of the people there looked and sounded as if they should have been archived in acid free, light blocking bags themsleves!)or about St Nics - it's about what is worth preserving. What is it that we want kept from our lives for posterity?

I have always thought that my gift to posterity was as a teacher - and as most of my 30 odd years of teaching were at St Nics, I thought I'd be remembered there. But a mere 5 months after leaving, I realise how vain a dream that was! I feel like Julius Caesar - "The evil men do lives after them. The good is oft interred with their bones." No - individual children may remember me, but the school has moved on. (I said I wasn't going to talk about St Nics - so I'll stop.)

So what do I want to preserve?

Relationships. Mostly my family links, I think. Who I am in the context of who my people are. I'm reading the "Earth's Children" series, and there people are introduced with all their connections as well as their names. So I'd like to be remembered as "Deb, of the Waddington and Lyon tribes; married to Peter, of the Avery and Coss tribes; mother of Sarah and Nicky, adopted mother of Riaan, Ray and Sihle, and grandmother of Kevin; sister of Jen; aunt, teacher, friend to many."

I don't want to be in a museum or in an archive. I don't really care if my letters (and blogs) are read by anyone, or if my photos are preserved in acid proof envelopes, or whether my trophies are polished with special, non-abrasive polish, or whether I have the right kinds of displays to keep all the "stuff" about me. What I hope is that through my family connections, my gene pool will go on, and one day there will be another little girl, with crooked teeth, mousy hair and freckles, a girl who loves to read and to write. And then I know that I will have reached immortality.