AN OLD AFRICAN PROVERB

My mother gave me a "Daily Guidepost" for Christmas the first year it was published (1982 I think). I read the daily devotion each morning and from time to time pick up some interesting information to go along with the devotional for the day. Today's entry included an old African proverb that says "when an old woman dies, a library burns down". Took me maybe five seconds to grasp the meaning of that statement but once I did, I immediately equated it to every time we lose a legend and hero of the sports younger days, a library burns down.

We need to keep putting the "library" on a digital platform so the loss of the building will not also mean the lost of the data. We have been doing that here for a long time. Maybe we need to speed it up a bit as more libraries are burning each month.

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What a change! It's been awhile since I've checked in and I'm quite surprised. It may take me awhile to figure it our but first look it's really great.


updated by @tim-leeming: 12/05/16 04:00:58PM

I do worry that all these digital photos will disappear and our grandchildren will never know the joy of of peering through ancient family photo albums.

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"Any Day is Good for Stock Car Racing"

20-25 years ago, my aunt gave me a great tip. She put her photo negatives in her safe deposit box. They'd be there to make reprints in case her originals were lost. At the time, I hadn't thought of that - but I soon did.

Within just a few years, however, I had no more negatives to add as all my photos went digital. Camera, Blackberry, iPhone, iPad, downloads, etc.

I am mildly concerned the "staying power" of digital photos. Old film photos may fade a bit, earn a coffee ring stain, curl in a corner, etc. But despite the warts, you can generally tell what is going on. With digital, one slip of the delete button - or even some corruption in a file header will make a photo permanently disappear.

I backup my hard drive regularly to an external drive. But then I'm lazy. My backup sits RIGHT NEXT to my computer. If we have an electrical surge or fire, I risk losing both. I should probably need to move to some sort of on-line backup.

On a broader basis, I realize Tim is referring to more than photos with his library proverb. I've enjoyed so many of the stories that have been shared here, various YouTube videos, books, personal encounters, etc. But so many more need to be shared and captured before the storytellers are no longer with us.

As an example, I tossed around a brainstorm idea of a book about and with Dale Inman to his son-in-law. He knows Inman has so many stories that could be shared, but he wasn't sure if he'd enjoy doing so. Wish something like that would happen.

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Schaefer: It's not just for racing anymore.

What a great proverb and analogy, Tim!

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Founder/Creator - RacersReunion®