Conference quark::human_relations-v1

    Back in the 7th, 8th, and 9th grades, I was involved in the Catholic
    Youth Organization.  We usually took 3 trips a year to various retreats
    within the state of Colorado.  We were always required to keep a
    sort of journal/diary/log of our stay.  It was used specifically
    for recording feelings, events, and sensory descriptions of whatever
    area/s we happened to be at.
    
    I still have all the notebooks of all the trips throughout those
    three years.  Just last summer, for the first time, I revisited
    one of the retreats, one that stood out the most in my mind.  The
    retreat was over 250 miles from where I reside in Colorado Springs,
    so I never even got the chance to "pass" by the place over the years.
    
    Till today, I remain smug in the detailed and descriptive memos
    I kept during those three years.  Surprisingly, at the revisited
    retreat, the detailed accounts of feelings/moods I could recollect
    fine.  However, some accounts as to activities taking place in
    certain surroundings I could not recall for the life of me, yet
    they must have happened, I put it on paper.  For instance, I 
    graphically mapped out a trail route a group of us had taken on
    horses, detailing certain points of interest, one in particular
    being a ghost town.  I couldn't recall the ghost town previous
    to this, which is why I was re-trekking the trail, I love ghost
    towns.  When I peaked a ridge and was able to gaze down at it, it
    stirred no memory whatsoever.  It was a beautiful, complete ghost
    town, yet I stared at it as if for the first time.  According to
    my accounts, we dismounted there and walked into several buildings,
    all of which were unfamiliar to me, hence I was unable to recall
    being in any of them, although I must have been.
    
    That was 16 years ago, not a very long time to forget much.  By
    the same token, I can remember things so far back, before I was
    yet able to speak as an infant...without a journal.  I quite surprise
    my parents by this recollection.
    
    A journal is great.  A journal takes devotion.  But it can be just
    as sad to read accounts of the past and wonder why you cannot place
    it.  It would be like watching a movie that was starring "you",
    yet you don't remember making it, and you're watching it for the
    first time.
    
    Sherm

    
    Neat subject/idea.
    
    My wife and I, when we remember, try to log each days events on
    the calender in our home. Then on New Years Eve, since we usually
    stay home, we have a few pops and review the year. We never cease
    to be amazed at what has transpired during the last year.

    I tried keeping  a Journal once, twice, a few times. After awhile
    it to look repetive and boring (like the rest of my life).
    
    What few lines I did keep (here and there) were occasionally read
    by 'passing' aquaintences who challenged my right to have 'such
    bizarre thoughts and feelings'.
    
    Later on, I found out from my Lawyer that 'journals' can be admissable
    as evidence (Against the journal keeper)  for whatever reasons 
    the opposition desires. So why keep notes of the good stuff is an
    SO or 'whomever' can use it as evidence against me ?
    
    Locks are one way of keeping 'prying eyes' out; but then the keys
    get lost, and you wind up breaking the locks off anyway.
    
    If you wanted to keep a 'journal' online, it now becomes subject
    to scrutiny by management, the 'network police', personnel, and
    any other person who 'knows the bugs around security features'.
    
    No thanks.
    
    If I were to keep a  journal it'd have to be in French so that NOONE
    in my family can read it ! With my luck, I'd probably wind up
    with an SO who could read French.
    
    .bob. 
    
   

    I don't keep a journal, but I do wrap my Christmas ornaments up
    when the season is over in newspapers hanging around the house.
    Its pretty neat the next season to open the boxes and read and 
    reminisce what happened the previous year!   
    
    

    one wonderful thing about journals - they last.
    
    Severl summers ago I ws taking care of my grandfather in Maine,
    and I was perusing the contents of some drawers - old recipe books
    - family history and genealogy - things like that....when I came
    across a journal.  It had only been kept for a week or so (see,
    they punted journal-keeping even then)...and it expressed a woman's
    fear at the start of the civil war, and how her beau had been drafted,
    and she prayed god would keep him safe, and would keep her busy
    in the war effort until he could come home and marry her.  
    
    True to form, after checking the genealogical charts, two years
    later they were married, and these and other remote ancestors' feelings
    have been revealed to me by journals, notes, sketches, college papers,
    etc.....this is the only way I have gotten to know the least bit
    about who they are.
    
    Yes I will start a journal - When I Find The Time....
    for now I'll just write as the fancy strikes.
    
    -Jody
    

    
    	Maybe someday my kids and then my kids kids and so on will work
    	at DEC and be able to read the notes I have written over the
    	past few years. In that respect, this is my journal.
    
    							mike

    Journals are wonderful things. I have a journal; I think of it often,
    usually while en route somewhere, and once a year or so I even remember
    to write in it!
    
    I also have some diaries that I kept in high school and college,
    and those are a real eye-opener. The anguish I went through over
    the silliest things - and the way a day or two could seem like forever
    ("He *still* hasn't called!", scribbled two days after I'd met some
    guy). Makes me awfully glad I don't have to be 16 again. (There
    are a few embarrassing entries that I wouldn't want published when
    I'm appointed to the Supreme Court, but heck, those are the chances
    you take.)
    
    Re notes: I regret sometimes that I haven't kept copies of my better
    efforts; I know that most of the conferences will be
    moved/purged/deleted someday, and even if they aren't I can hardly pass
    them along to my descendants (if I have any). Extracting my notes out
    of context removes a lot of the meaning, and extracting other peoples'
    notes too makes the whole thing less "my thoughts" and more "what we
    all talked about at DEC". 
    
    My grandmother kept a brief "journal" of sorts, in which she would
    jot down items of interest, births, deaths, marriages, visits from
    the family (and, poignantly, non-visits; "The Davids (my father
    and our family) were conspicuous by not coming at all."). At the
    end of each year she would type up these entries, usually a half-dozen
    lines per month. After she died, Dad made copies of her journal,
    which had been kept continuously from about 1943 until a month or
    so before her death. I treasure it, even if it's painful to read
    sometimes, and I wish she had written more.

    -b