Day 5 - 199 -- Addressing the Past

The early morning rain meant the house painters did not arrive as I got ready for work. That made the day more relaxed -- much less hustle and bustle. Time at the office saw more sorting. This set of files came from the many conferences and workshops I've attended over the years. In the early days, much paper was produced in the form of booklets of presentation abstracts, handouts for attendees and general information and itinerary. The arrival of different software platforms has made the shelf footprint much smaller -- just a few pages of my conference notes. Going through these I found the exact day and time I first heard about qualitative methods in nutrition research and the likelihood of television daytime talk shows to begin to form social mores. Each of these were filed away in the memory banks waiting to burst forth when I began to develop research questions. This partial shelf also contained my first research presentation at an international conference on child health. I also found a certificate telling me I'd completed a workshop on a topic that I clearly don't recall. That was decades ago, so I'll give myself a by just this once. Parts of these many files went to the recycling bag, while I kept some parts of the larger documents.

The day ended with much more rain -- spitting around supper time and then a deluge later in the evening. I met a friend and colleague for a lovely visit over supper and a glass of wine. We have worked on a number of projects together, two of which were quite large in scale and funding. I'd sent her some of the files and materials I still had from one project, which led to her recalling the ups and downs of those years. So, it seems I'm spreading the memories around. <smile>

Perhaps the rain helped to work through the memories and reflect on how they fit into the here and now. They do as things underway now were built upon the base formed by those many projects. Lyrics that highlight this concept seemed best to share today. The singer-songwriter is a Canadian Indie-pop artist. Enjoy!

Past in Present -- Feist