Chronicles from the Virus Day 52. History Teaches Us We Haven't Changed.
So, in seventy years time, when historians research this Great Pandemic of '20, where will they go to find information on how the common people got through it? Will they search attics and boxes, and chests, and libraries to find written letters and diaries? No, they'll try to find information on obsolete servers, most likely.
Some would argue that this is the most documented age. Almost everyone can read and write and has access to writing utensils, while most people in first world countries have some kind of access to internet. There have been videos, posts, memes, pictures, everything, hung on internet on how we are going through this pandemic. But will any of this survive time? How many of us have picked up a pen to write a physical letter on paper to someone we know, describing what we're going through?
Perhaps we should be thankful that the 1918 flu pandemic happened before computers made themselves ubiquitous. We have letters, diaries, photos, newspaper articles, that will always tell us what the person who held it was thinking at that moment. Their thoughts and visions are frozen in time on paper for all to see. What memories we are creating now are being kept on servers that may well become obsolete in a few years, and the information contained in them might well be lost.
I've been looking up letters and diaries from 1918 that have been transcribed online. Life continued for most of them, even while they were touched by the flu. One girl, Clara Wrasse from Chicago, wrote letters to her sweetheart stationed in France. In one letter, dated October 17th, she writes, "Chicago looks as tho it has got one foot in the grave & the other on a banana pealing [sic]. Everything is closed on account of that epidemic. Dances, Theatres, & all other places of amusements. Every evening schools are closed. No smoking whatever on car. If you cough continuously at work, your employers are compelled to send you home. I tell you, it's awful. Numbers of people die every day."
Edith Coffin (Colby) Mahoney, of Salem, Massachusetts, seems to have been of an upper strata, and participated in different social gatherings, which she wrote about in her daily diary. On September 26th, she wrote, "Torrential rain for 24 hours, beginning at 3am today, some thunder in the P.M. Most depressing day after bad news from Eugene. He died at 6:40am. Several thousand cases in the city with a great shortage of nurses and doctors. Theatres, churches, gatherings of everykind stopped. Even 4th Liberty Loan drivers parade postponed."
Just as there are people who aren't touched by this illness now, so there were people then. Both the people now and the people then were not happy they were quarantined. A soldier writing from the Marine Corps boot camp at Parris Island, to a professor in Indiana wrote, "We were quarrantined on account of the Spanish influenza and everyone is mad."
There were many sad stories, as well. The greatest problem with the flu of 1918, was that it attacked children and medium-aged adults in greater numbers. A woman wrote to her husband from West Lafayette, Indiana, in October, "I do hope you all miss the epidemic. It is certainly taking a heavy toll around here. And it's usually all over in two or three days. You remember the Mr. and Mrs. Gosina...? Their two year old boy died (influenza) last Sunday - sick two days. Mrs. G. and the baby (5 mo. old) are both very ill. There is a very sad case at St. Eliz. Mother of the first "Camp Purdue baby" is very ill with typhoid. The father was sent for - he had been transferred south a short time before the baby arrived - and had never seen it. He got here and the next day took sick - "flu" and now they are both dying."
I suppose that some of us do keep journal diaries these days. Those that don't, like me, should probably download everything that we have uploaded, and find a way to print it out. Just as we are touched by reading what people a hundred years ago wrote, so will our future generations be touched. Those papers still exude the thoughts, hopes, dreams, and fears of the people who put pen to them. Paper can never compare to a computer screen.
Life continues.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/what-we-can-learn-1918-influenza-diaries-180974614/
https://www.influenzaarchive.org/
https://oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/kt2t1nf4s5/entire_text/
Some would argue that this is the most documented age. Almost everyone can read and write and has access to writing utensils, while most people in first world countries have some kind of access to internet. There have been videos, posts, memes, pictures, everything, hung on internet on how we are going through this pandemic. But will any of this survive time? How many of us have picked up a pen to write a physical letter on paper to someone we know, describing what we're going through?
Perhaps we should be thankful that the 1918 flu pandemic happened before computers made themselves ubiquitous. We have letters, diaries, photos, newspaper articles, that will always tell us what the person who held it was thinking at that moment. Their thoughts and visions are frozen in time on paper for all to see. What memories we are creating now are being kept on servers that may well become obsolete in a few years, and the information contained in them might well be lost.
I've been looking up letters and diaries from 1918 that have been transcribed online. Life continued for most of them, even while they were touched by the flu. One girl, Clara Wrasse from Chicago, wrote letters to her sweetheart stationed in France. In one letter, dated October 17th, she writes, "Chicago looks as tho it has got one foot in the grave & the other on a banana pealing [sic]. Everything is closed on account of that epidemic. Dances, Theatres, & all other places of amusements. Every evening schools are closed. No smoking whatever on car. If you cough continuously at work, your employers are compelled to send you home. I tell you, it's awful. Numbers of people die every day."
Edith Coffin (Colby) Mahoney, of Salem, Massachusetts, seems to have been of an upper strata, and participated in different social gatherings, which she wrote about in her daily diary. On September 26th, she wrote, "Torrential rain for 24 hours, beginning at 3am today, some thunder in the P.M. Most depressing day after bad news from Eugene. He died at 6:40am. Several thousand cases in the city with a great shortage of nurses and doctors. Theatres, churches, gatherings of everykind stopped. Even 4th Liberty Loan drivers parade postponed."
Just as there are people who aren't touched by this illness now, so there were people then. Both the people now and the people then were not happy they were quarantined. A soldier writing from the Marine Corps boot camp at Parris Island, to a professor in Indiana wrote, "We were quarrantined on account of the Spanish influenza and everyone is mad."
There were many sad stories, as well. The greatest problem with the flu of 1918, was that it attacked children and medium-aged adults in greater numbers. A woman wrote to her husband from West Lafayette, Indiana, in October, "I do hope you all miss the epidemic. It is certainly taking a heavy toll around here. And it's usually all over in two or three days. You remember the Mr. and Mrs. Gosina...? Their two year old boy died (influenza) last Sunday - sick two days. Mrs. G. and the baby (5 mo. old) are both very ill. There is a very sad case at St. Eliz. Mother of the first "Camp Purdue baby" is very ill with typhoid. The father was sent for - he had been transferred south a short time before the baby arrived - and had never seen it. He got here and the next day took sick - "flu" and now they are both dying."
I suppose that some of us do keep journal diaries these days. Those that don't, like me, should probably download everything that we have uploaded, and find a way to print it out. Just as we are touched by reading what people a hundred years ago wrote, so will our future generations be touched. Those papers still exude the thoughts, hopes, dreams, and fears of the people who put pen to them. Paper can never compare to a computer screen.
Life continues.
 |
| Much of what is on here is still very valid. |
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/what-we-can-learn-1918-influenza-diaries-180974614/
https://www.influenzaarchive.org/
https://oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/kt2t1nf4s5/entire_text/
It's a good thought. I have downloaded blogs and saved them on hard drives, but as you say, in the future those may be useless. Paper lasts better. Take care, Maria!
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