Keeping a Journal

**Rick** · 06-14-2008, 08:39 PM

We've all read excerpts from some historical figure's journal or diary. Perhaps you've read some of the Lewis and Clark journals or day dreamed over their sketches. Read Martha Ballard's entries about life in the late 18th century in New England. Or you might have relished the words of Alice Cunningham Fletcher, an anthropologist who, at age 43, spent six weeks with the Sioux in 1881. Her journals include so many sketches and photographs.

We've stopped keeping journals as a culture. Our everyday world is captured in pixels and transmitted on medium that probably won't even be around in ten years let alone 200.

Do you keep a journal? A record of your every day life. Maybe the weather? Or the animals you encountered that day. If you do, would you care to share what you write about?

For the rest, if you are interested in starting a journal, here is some information to get you started.

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/How_to_Keep_a_Journal

**awfoxden** · 06-14-2008, 09:57 PM

i've attempted on several ocasions and find them interesting reads to look back on - however i find in many ways i'm a product of modern society and get too lazy to keep it up for more than a few weeks. would love to just lack motivation to keep it up.

**Flavor Bear** · 06-14-2008, 11:39 PM

My life is too mundane to waste the paper by writing the everyday events down.
I do keep a sketch journal in which I draw noteworthy things I see, but there isn't much to take note of around here.

I'm also trying to come up with designs for a "survival journal" of some sort. Bound in aluminum foil or duct tape attached in a manner that would make it easy to remove and reuse... If I ever figure it out, I will post it...

**Ole WV Coot** · 06-15-2008, 12:49 AM

A journal??? Get locked up with some big mean guy whose favorite game is hide the weenie or pass the hillbilly?? At my age anything past 6mo. would be a life sentence. Think also of my grandkids and the humiliation they would have to face plus moving and changing their name. Survival would take on a whole new meaning to me. The only thing about survival while being incarcerated I know is don't drop anything and bend over to pick it up. I would be forced to beg for soap on a rope. NO WAY would I rat on myself. I would....Never mind, I've had my say....

**wildWoman** · 06-16-2008, 11:29 AM

We've kept a journal since we moved out here. Not a daily log, but we write down details of freeze-up, break-up, ice thickness, animal activities (how many moose coming into the wintering grounds, going from a to b etc), when the trees get leaves, bugs come out, especially spectacular northern lights and so on and so forth. We keep a daily log of the temperatures on our calendar; it's actually really interesting when you live in such dependence on the weather. We found that our neighbour and ourselves tend to think this spring is colder, or that winter was warmer etc and a lot of times it's not true when we compare the data.

**Beo** · 06-16-2008, 11:33 AM

I keep a journal of everytime I hit the forests or wilderness, what I do, where I go, what I carry, and all the adventures of what happened, and who-if anyone-goes with me.

**trax** · 06-16-2008, 11:58 AM

I don't usually, I did in the past but I wasn't really disciplined enough to keep it up regularly. I had the "ultimate" to me anyway of reading a journal when I read my great-great-great-grandfather's ( I may have left out a great) He was the first mapmaker for Hudson's Bay Company and I got to read his account of paddling down from the Bay through Manitoba with 2 Cree guides.

**Rick** · 06-16-2008, 11:58 AM

I happened upon an old deserted farm house once and found the journal of the farmer that had lived there. Planting dates, temps, rain, the same kind of things you outlined WW. I did so want to keep that book but the house was on private property and it didn't belong to me so I put it back. The house is long gone now. Bull dozed down and I'm sure the book went with it. Looking back I wish I would have kept it. In some way the farmer that wrote it would still be alive and that's the only reason.

A few years later I found an attendance roster in the attic of an old school that was being renovated and transformed into apartments. It covered a time period (1917-1919) in which the 1918 flu pandemic took so many lives. There were notations of kids having been let out of school early to help with planting or harvesting and there were so many notations of kids that died due to the flu. It's on lone to the county historical society and is displayed as the teachers roster in a recreated one room school house. It's available to anyone that is researching their ancestry in the county.

I hope the old farmer thinks I did the right thing with that one.

**trax** · 06-16-2008, 12:02 PM

The Provincial Archives in Winnipeg house the Hudson Bay Company archives as well. That organization was incredible for the records they kept, you can trace back birth dates, death dates, marriage records, weather records, trade journals to the late 1600's and up. One of my I'm not sure how many greats grandfathers (grandson of the one I mentioned earlier) was the Chief Factor at a Hudson Bay trading post and I got to read his journals as well.

**Beo** · 06-16-2008, 12:04 PM

I have three old books from the civil war, actually they are the ledgers of captured soldiers that were housed in the Cincinnati Workhouse, also there are the other prisoners who were there. They show the dates entered into the prison, what they had done, what they had, what was given them, and when they left, and if they died while there. Each entry is signed by the prisoner and the guard on duty.
May be worth something I'm not sure.

**Flavor Bear** · 06-16-2008, 03:00 PM

Originally Posted by Rick

I happened upon an old deserted farm house once and found the journal of the farmer that had lived there. Planting dates, temps, rain, the same kind of things you outlined WW. I did so want to keep that book but the house was on private property and it didn't belong to me so I put it back. The house is long gone now. Bull dozed down and I'm sure the book went with it. Looking back I wish I would have kept it. In some way the farmer that wrote it would still be alive and that's the only reason.

A few years later I found an attendance roster in the attic of an old school that was being renovated and transformed into apartments. It covered a time period (1917-1919) in which the 1918 flu pandemic took so many lives. There were notations of kids having been let out of school early to help with planting or harvesting and there were so many notations of kids that died due to the flu. It's on lone to the county historical society and is displayed as the teachers roster in a recreated one room school house. It's available to anyone that is researching their ancestry in the county.

I hope the old farmer thinks I did the right thing with that one.

Are you sure they both weren't just Theodore Dreiser novels?

**Beo** · 06-16-2008, 03:11 PM

Here's a pic of the old CCI Workhouse just before being torn down although it was a historical site it had fallen beyond repair.
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Pretty creepy place.

**Rick** · 06-16-2008, 04:13 PM

Originally Posted by FB

Are you sure they both weren't just Theodore Dreiser novels?

What?! Me read anything written by a socialist? Bite your tongue. Why I'd sooner have my toes set on fire....no, that's too harsh....stomped....no, that hurts. Okay, I'll read the darn thing but just this once!

**crashdive123** · 06-16-2008, 09:18 PM

Originally Posted by Flavor Bear

My life is too mundane to waste the paper by writing the everyday events down.
I do keep a sketch journal in which I draw noteworthy things I see, but there isn't much to take note of around here.

I'm also trying to come up with designs for a "survival journal" of some sort. Bound in aluminum foil or duct tape attached in a manner that would make it easy to remove and reuse... If I ever figure it out, I will post it...

A sketch journal can be a great way to keep a journal. You know what they say about the picture and a thousand words (of couse the way I draw it would probably take a thousand words to explain what it was that I drew).

**FVR** · 06-16-2008, 09:22 PM

I keep a journal of my hunts, shoots, and field activities.

Not alot of writing, just highlights. Have not wrote in it for awhile now as I have not done diddly. It is neat to read from years back, the first one goes back to 97.