A Tangent

While web surfing around for Leonardo, I stumbled on The Johnson Family Papers Project. It is truly a wonderful site. From its about page:

My name is Sue Johnson and I run this web page, which is the on-line presence of the Johnson Family Papers Project. And what, you may ask, is the Johnson Family Papers Project? It’s something of a cross between a collection of memories, an act of mourning and a repository of social history. The custodian of stories and memorabilia in my family had, for many years, been my mother Joan. Shortly before she died in 1998, Joan said she wanted to put the family vacation journals into the computer to save them. When she died, my sisters and I inherited the journals and many other papers. Because we all lived in different parts of the country (and I had been meaning to learn html anyway) I started to put the Johnson family archive on the web. That way, we could all see and share the fragments of family history my mother had so carefully collected and saved.

Webbing the JFPP wasn’t easy for me. My mother died suddenly and at a young age (she was 65), and it was hard to go back and read about trips we took as I prepared these pages. On the other hand, my loss would have been unbearable were it not for those very times we had spent together. Mourning and celebration go hand in hand here.

Non-family members are welcome to peruse the JFPP. Some of what appears on this site is very clever, funny and / or interesting, and well-deserved of a read. Also, since I was trained as a social scientist the Johnson Family Papers fascinated me in their sheer quality as Data. How often do you get to look into the mundane details of someone’s everyday life and thought from twenty, thirty, fifty years ago? If you are an anthropologist or social historian, you will know what I mean. If you are not, you will probably think I am batty. At any rate, the JFPP is a resource for anyone who wishes to study the 20th century middle-class American Family, the Farber clan of Buffalo, or minor Northern Italian nobility.