The license to be Pandora

I spend a lot of time opening and closing boxes. I've yet to open one that brought about large-scale catastrophic devestation but it's funny, the things people hide away from themselves, from the world. Or the things we keep, for no other reason than we've just stopped seeing them. Recently, I've been fortunate enough to start work on 3 sets of material: one for a private client and two familial: my biological grandfather James Daniel Young's murder in Waysnesille, Virginia in 1964 and the Binnington family history, encompassing the Williams, Cartwrights and de Jersey families. Not sure how I ended up with yet another carrier bag, but there it is, occasionally rustling a reminder.

We finally put the last of the AIM-25 contribution Yerusha project to bed last week and our together a 3 short interviews, edited by the amazing Toby Roberts at Colne Brothers Film are live. If it hadn't been for Toby, wel...let's just say despite the Fraggle hair and sounding like a 12 year old, I think we managed to make data aggregation and heritage sound interesting, if not dead sexy.  Days are many when I am quite certain I shouldn't be allowed access to social media.  The entire project centered around looking for the unseen Jewish collections in London repositories and the findings are being fed into a Pan-European project, but the results aren't searchable yet, which makes organising speakers and workshops...challenging. Don't get me wrong: we could have done it, but it would have been stilted and there would have been no cake.  And cake is  so what makes these things worth the energy expenditure.  

Of course, Covidity meant there was no moving through attics or digging through boxes, pencil precariously tucked in my hair. There were no emergency rehomings of material, setting of the cultural heritage world to rights over lukewarm mugs of tea and stale biscuits.  It makes me a bit nostalgic for what we didn't get to discover, even though there is time enough 

I'm honoured to have been able to be part of the project and my lingerie drawers are ever grateful.  The wider project has helped provide a new filter to examine collective history through and that is always thrilling to be involved in.  And it gave me time to further incubate on my theory that the records continuum and life cycle models do work together, you just have to think about them in 3D. 

I genuinely don't know what would have filled that time during Covidty's first act, because working as a virtual PA to my brother and his drama was not something I wanted or needed to continue doing. There was no Miss Jones to try to lure out for morning walks, the kiddos didn't/don't need me hovering incessantly. 

Not that I'm at loose ends, but I'm curious to see what will fill up that time,. especially as the world begins to re-emerge from its brief slumber. And what adventures it will bring for me, as I work through forgotten lives and unshared stories. What comes next? More...always more.