A entry as an excuse to post a quote

In my voice thing, I talked about the latest book I'm reading which is Alex Miller's Journey to the Stone Country.  My mother gave to to me on my last trip home thinking I would enjoy it, which I am.  The people in it share my profession and more surprisingly share the aspect of it I'm in.  They are doing cultural survey ahead of a planned reservoir.  Of course there are differences -- I would never do that much camping (but then I don't camp), and there is a lot more "ped" survey (field walking) than I ever get to do, but every once in while a bit jumps out at me as something I or my co-workers would do or say.  Particularly one portion when two characters are arguing over whether or not early European settlement sites are equally deserving of conservation.  Oh, the historic vs. pre-historic debate. 


Anyway, here's a passage I enjoyed...
"It's the decay and abandonment that moves us in the first place, isn't it? About places like this? It's what makes them so poignant for us.  When we conserve them they lose all that.  We polish them up and cherish them.  We banish their ghosts and make them safe for the future.  We falsify them.  Conserved things become part of our present.  They become ordinary. The very thing we set out to conserve is the thing we inevitably destroy.  We keep the fabric but we lose the spirit.  It's one thing to record the past, but it's something else to conserve it.  I'm not sure I believe in the conservation of places like this."

A entry as an excuse to post a quote

In my voice thing, I talked about the latest book I'm reading which is Alex Miller's Journey to the Stone Country.  My mother gave to to me on my last trip home thinking I would enjoy it, which I am.  The people in it share my profession and more surprisingly share the aspect of it I'm in.  They are doing cultural survey ahead of a planned reservoir.  Of course there are differences -- I would never do that much camping (but then I don't camp), and there is a lot more "ped" survey (field walking) than I ever get to do, but every once in while a bit jumps out at me as something I or my co-workers would do or say.  Particularly one portion when two characters are arguing over whether or not early European settlement sites are equally deserving of conservation.  Oh, the historic vs. pre-historic debate. 


Anyway, here's a passage I enjoyed...
"It's the decay and abandonment that moves us in the first place, isn't it? About places like this? It's what makes them so poignant for us.  When we conserve them they lose all that.  We polish them up and cherish them.  We banish their ghosts and make them safe for the future.  We falsify them.  Conserved things become part of our present.  They become ordinary. The very thing we set out to conserve is the thing we inevitably destroy.  We keep the fabric but we lose the spirit.  It's one thing to record the past, but it's something else to conserve it.  I'm not sure I believe in the conservation of places like this."