Burial at sea

In November of 1997 my father died. In the summer of 1998 my sister,
my mother and I scattered his ashes in Hatteras, NC, near a bench on a
beach access boardwalk where he would sit on during the many visits he
made to the Outer Banks.
Hatteras was one of his favorite places. The solitude, the sounds, the
ocean, the climate, but most of all the place, drew him and his wife
and children again and again to this spot. I'm here with my mother, my
wife, and kids. They never knew my father. To them he's just a man in
photographs, who they often mistake for me. He's a lot more than that,
a lot more than me I think. I won't describe him, other to say I
think it means a lot to him that we're here and we're walking on the
same beaches, sitting on the same benches and talking about our visits
to Lee Robinson's before they built the new store, to the Red & White
when the floors were wooden, to Hatteras Sands when the hurricanes
came and the tents were destroyed and how I finally beat Mom at ping
pong after years of losing every match, and of course trips to the
light, the heat inside, the many steps, the wind, the sun, the Apple
Uglies at the Orange Apple Blossom bakery, the pizza and gingerbread at the
Gingerbread House. I have 37 years of history to this place, I can see
my children building their own memories. To them it isn't where their
grandfather is buried, it really is their place now.

How much will be lost and will anyone in the future even care?

When I started blogging and posting all my pictures to flickr, in the back of my mind I worried, "what if these sites close down?" In time my concern lessoned, as more services came and others went away. In fact, once Yahoo Photos started to shut down (a few years after Yahoo had acquired Flickr) but they made it easy to transfer photos to any service, I lost any lingering concern. Sites all over the place, from now until the end of time on the web, will pop up to pluck your old content off all those dying old platforms when the time comes. In fact, there's business reasons for it, many will argue: I love how Posterous has turned old dying platforms into its business model.

Wonder what will happen when people abandon Facebook like many of us did to AOL back in the late 90s...certainly there will be a lot more content to syphon off, but perhaps there will be something better and more useful in the near future to make this all seem like crazy talk anyway.





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A&W

DSCN6552
Originally uploaded by Gramma Kit

While fast food is fast food and probably not ever worth the time, there's a mini golf (we call it Putt Putt around here) in Cortland NY that's excellent fun, for those who like that sort of thing. And there's even an old drive in A&W next door. I like their root beer. Always have. Probably because I grew up playing putt putt and getting thirsty.

Moooosic in the Sidebar

I wish they were full tracks... but I ain't got connections to make that happen. But I did install a widget (remember those from a few years ago?!) for your musical enjoyment in the sidebar. Drinks will be next, as soon as I figure out how to do that. You know, for the side bar.

I'll update the music periodically to give you a glimpse of the cool stuff you can buy with your pocket change. You can also check out much more music I like, and stream full tracks, on Last.fm. Check me out there if you even care...