Isn’t technology wonderful? As I type this and ponder which old picture I’ll put in the paper this week, I’m simultaneously listening to the most wonderful jazz pianist ever, Bill Evans. The CD is in the computer, of course. Who would have ever imagined such a thing – even 10 years ago?

Everything evolves so fast, it’s more important than ever to take a minute or hopefully more, and remember the past.

Ten years ago, rumblings were heard about the Millennium and what horrors might happen. Do you remember? Preparations were made. Committees formed. Computers programmed. Software was being designed. And the marketing moguls and gurus were in top form.

Twenty years ago, I was the parent of a teenager, another of those maligned single moms we used to hear so much about. As marketing manager of a local company, I was balancing multi-million dollar budgets and meetings about projected sales, with conferences at school, delivery service of a bunch of kids, chaperoning trips and worrying a lot of the time.

In 1975, 30 years ago, I was dreading becoming 40 in a couple of years, more worrying. Rushing from work to the babysitters, to T-Ball or Little League, baking 17 cookies and planning advertising for four retail building materials stores. In my very little spare time, I read articles in magazines about How to Make Better Use of Your Time and Twenty Meals You Can Make in 30 Minutes. I flipped through the clothing ads, the perfumed pages and wondered where my youth had gone.

Forty years ago, I was living in a 4th floor walk up apartment in Back Bay, working as a legal secretary by day and jazz club hostess by night. I was never going to get married, but I was definitely going to join the Peace Corps – some day. Of course, thoughts of Windham, Maine were fleeting; trips home were a guilty necessity and mostly boring. My life was filled with music, parties, exotic recipes and friends, all of us trying desperately to make sense of a world gone crazy because of a war that made no sense, riots which made less sense, and ugly prejudice.

Windham’s town hall in 1955, just 50 years ago, was the high school and community center rolled into one. My school days were coming to an end – whatever would I do without the routine, all the activities, the Dramatics Club, Art Club, Literary Club – scary and exciting at the same time. I’d be on my own shortly. However would I manage? Everything up until now had happened within a six or seven mile radius of my birthplace. Soon – maybe too soon? – the world would be mine.

For the first time in my life, I saw my mother cry. It was 1945. My father was gone. It’s easy to recall an event like this, even though it happened 60 long years ago. I wondered what was wrong, after all, my mother was an adult – old, to me in those days. I was all of eight years old; my dear mother, just 28, alone with four little children and her husband off to war. I remember her struggling with cashing an allotment check, making do with ration stamps, carrying water from the well, and trying so hard to keep it all together. But she always found time to read to us and teach us to read.

To me, this is history. It surely isn’t boring. Remembering people, how we evolve and change, the events (of history) which create and shape us.

And here I am, thinking about an interesting bit of pictorial history to put in the paper this week and listening to jazz. And remembering when I heard it the first time 40 years ago, for real, live and in person, as they say. And remembering all that went before and came after.

Sharpen your pencil. Start writing down what you remember. Make history for the future.

See you next week.