The Importance of Documenting

(originally posted on the evening of July 19, 2006)

Through the end of the year, the National Archives is doing an incredible exhibit on letters and transcripts that capture historic moments. I was lamenting that it is harder for me to zip down to DC for this kind of thing when I found the National Archives' online version of the exhibit. God bless the Internet! Without leaving my desk or jostling with other tourists, I could read up on the two dozen or so items, including George Washington's take on a bioterrorism threat from the Brits, a slave's loving correspondence to his wife, and Lady Bird Johnson's eyewitness account of the JFK assassination.

I love history -- who doesn't? -- and such first-person angles are even juicier. It makes me appreciative of all the letter-writing and real-time memoiring that people did, that we might be privy to such important events from such intimate perspectives. And for all the bashing of modern culture -- that we don't write personal letters anymore -- how much more spontaneous and unfiltered can it get than all the blogging that's going on? (Speaking of which, why hasn't anyone published a book of first-person accounts of the biggest news stories from the first half of this decade? Like you wouldn't buy that book?)

So if you blog, blog some more. And if you don't, start. Who knows who will benefit from your account?