by Adele Woodyard
There’s nothing like updating a travel guide to make you aware of the inevitability of change. That fact gave me a nudge when the first edition of Florida “Freebies” and “Cheapies” 250 Daytrips for Little or No Money was released in March, 2012, and I learned one museum in it had just closed. Now I’ve begun bringing a second edition up to speed, it seems quite a few will need a replacement as they move to the sections, For a Few $$ More.
Of course the word “change” alone opens a Pandora’s box in my mind. Add “speed” to change and it becomes almost impossible to keep up. One thought leads to another, so fast they begin to spin like a tornado filled with random bits and pieces of a past .trying to connect with the present. Being a writer I think of the tidbits of Florida history inserted within my book that may remind the reader there is still a tomorrow. For instance, the tiny Mulberry Phosphate Museum is a visual thread between ancient times and today’s threat from global warming. How? Through physical replicas and fossils of prehistoric animals that lived when a much wider peninsular Florida was dry, and died when all but the Lake Wales Ridge was under water.
The Sunshine State has a number of museums, buildings, and living history sites in towns and parks that celebrate its past. As long they cost $10 or less to visit, many of them are in my book, but it being a travel guide, their history is no more than a smidgeon. For the whole story, you need to read historic publications, like the one I bought. a few nights ago when I attended an author talk at Tarpon Springs Library. Purchase of Historic Pinellas County by James Anthony Schnur benefited Heritage Village, one of the best and largest living history attractions in the state. The room was packed and like myself, two-thirds of the overflow were gray heads. Do we travel more, or are just more interested in history as we grow older? If nothing else, viewing the past is a momentary “stop the world, I want to get off” as well as a subtle reminder that life goes on no matter how fast it changes.
That thought then raised memories of writing short stories on a typewriter so old, the font needed a magnifying glass to be read, up to my current 2011 laptop with Windows 7. And, as a writer, here’s today’s major problem: my backup goes no further back than 2007. If I hadn’t printed out all my words from the time I sold my first piece in 1988, they’d be lost. All those I’d saved on 5.25 and 4.5 floppy discs had to be thrown out. How much longer will those saved on CDs still be usable?
It isn’t that they are of value to anyone but me. It’s what the idea represents. Many, many moons ago Florida’s prehistoric Indians left the record of their lives in the ground. Primitive tools, bones, pottery slowly piled up over the generations until they became huge mounds of shell and/or dirt that archeologists still trace today. But what about the future? If printed books become non-existent, will CDs become the eventual shell mounds of our lives? Or is it Cloud, that endless space social networks try to fill with our desire to be heard?
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