rejectomorph (flying_blind) wrote,
rejectomorph
flying_blind

Found

I've stumbled upon another of those artifacts which owes its existence to the Internet. Dorothy's Diary is the actual diary of a Chicago girl who was 16 years old in 1945. Her son spent the last year putting her 1945 entries online, day for day (1945 and 2007 shared a calendar), annotated with comments added in 2001 by her older sister, and presented with the addition of family photographs and various artifacts of the era such as movie posters, magazine covers, advertisements, plus the news headlines of the day, all placing Dorothy's daily life in the context of the time.

There are also links to movie trailers and bits of music and such, turning the whole project into a fascinating cultural mashup. I find it remarkable that such a richly contextualized biographical picture of a period in the life of a regular person from another era, such as Dot, is now accessible to the world via the Internet. Even a few years ago this was the sort of thing that appeared only on television, and presented the stories of only the celebrated or the notorious.

Dot died in 1964, so she never saw (or probably even imagined) our world of digital diaries, but now she has, in a way, become one of us. I wish I'd discovered this project last year, but here's a belated welcome to the Internet, Dot.




There were a few hours of sunlight today, as I expected, but they were ended before sunset by the arrival of another batch of heavy clouds. Since then there has been some re-clearing, so I can now see stars for the first time in several nights. I have no idea what the sky will decide to do next. It's supposed to be sunny tomorrow, but one never knows this time of year. We shall see.
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