My Commonplace Book But Not Really

There's nothing like a good old fashioned cold complete with sniffles, sneezing, runny nose, sore body parts and mild headaches to keep ones procrastination quota at its upper limit. Needless to say I successfully avoided just about all manner of  real human contact and dare I say my attempts to avoid the cyber crowd where there was no danger of passing along my unwanted communal discomfort were reasonably fruitful albeit sporadic in as much as one can attempt to ignore those annoying reminders that there is someone waiting at my digital door like some desperate politician in the last few days before the election knowing there's no hope but trying desperately to garner the requisite number of votes to get his deposit back. So with health restored and a federal election in the offing which will surely bring on those nagging bits of mind numbing rhetorical double speak that so often litter the well worn path we call the election trail I will forge ahead into the yawning vortex of digital density and extract from my notes something to add to this seething cauldron of smouldering cyber babble that threatens to darken every cloud and eventually to unleash a downpour of meaningless 140 character forgotten messages upon our over stimulated central processing units. So does anybody bother to take note or keep notes on all this electronic spew? Which brings me, sort of, to the point of this long delayed piece. Throughout the ages Western intellectuals have had a rich tradition of gathering the memorable thoughts, ideas, inspirational passages from each other and transcribing them into  personal journals for referencing later. This practice was called "commonplacing" and the tomes housing all these quotes and observations were called "commonplace" books.  Historically, a commonplace book was a written document or more precisely a series of either transcribed reproductions of quotes and ideas that were important to the reader. Sort of like a scrapbook of interesting citations, quotes and ideas for the collector to refer to later. I must admit that I had not heard of such a thing until stumbling upon a discussion of the subject by Steven Johnson in his recently published book "Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History Of Innovation". Johnson describes how such great thinkers such as John Locke kept detailed notes and even devised elaborate systems for indexing the books entries. As one advocate that Johnson quotes, that maintaining the books enabled one to "lay up a fund of knowledge, from which we may at all times select what is useful in the pursuits of life". Johnson's discussion in his book and a subsequent reading of a lecture he gave at Columbia University convinced me that somewhere in the clutter and chaos that quite accurately characterizes the physical surroundings in which I find myself reflecting on the vicissitudinous of everyday life and occasionally commenting on it that somewhere in there lies a comonplace book. You see ever since I can remember I have been commonplacing well sort of. I would put little sticky notes in the pages of books where passages would be circled or starred in pencil  vowing to get back to it later when the time was right to use that perfect quote or idea for some now long forgotten article or inclusion in the great novel always forthcoming but never appearing. Stacks of aged and yellowing newspaper clippings added to almost every weekend stored for just that exact time when needed to enhance that incomplete thought languish under the window next to my desk. When I attended University and later graduate school I maintained filing cabinets full of  academic journal articles, texts and class notes used for writing papers and my thesis then later storing them in my garage in cardboard boxes damp and musty from sitting on the concrete floor just in case I may need them some day. Then while working I began gathering again articles, newspaper clippings and such filling up files and corners of my office occasionally passing one on to other staff if I felt it would interest them all the while I continued to read and place little coloured sticky notes in the pages where interesting things were said because you never know when you may need that ideal quote for that book you're going to write someday really soon. Today a few years removed from the corporate world I have most of the books still holding the little reminders some faded some new and still brightly coloured as I continue my own version of commonplacing.  I sit here looking around for the next book to set free for the Hobo Tomes Project my eyes are met by discarded book jackets of tomes already set loose, piles of  new and old newspaper articles and an army of books with little coloured tags hanging from their pages like long forgotten medals some with more than others indicating  recognition for a job well done for heroic effort in enhancing my knowledge base. But yet all those colours haunt me like some repetitive nightmare coming at me night after night demanding that I organize, index and file them away for safe keeping calling out time and time again for their own commonplace book but I am happy here in my own organized chaos. Maybe one day I will I promise I will maybe even use all these new apps from the web to categorize and systematize but then what of all those gluey bits of coloured paper there'll be no room for them in my digital commonplace book. So I think I'll just keep things the way they are for now surrounded by my own version of a commonplace book but not really.

Latest Tramps Head To Hong Kong

Three more books have hit the international circuit. One in a McDonalds in Hong Kong and two others somewhere in the same city. Two more were left at the Purple Perk today during the noon hour. Check the Where Are They Now link for locations of books.

Keeping The Mind Invigorated Through Reading

In the March issue of The Calgary Journal the Focus section deals with the advantages of reading also touching on the positive impact reading has on literacy.  There's a nice article on Bookcrossing which I have referred to in an earlier blog . The link can be found under resources.

Project Update: It's now been just over two months since I initiated The Hobo Tomes Project. There are 26 books out there tramping around the US and Canada.  So far I have only 1 person contact me to let me know that they have adopted a book. Follow up on most of the locations where books were left indicate that the books have been taken in by someone. If you have one of these books please contact me at the e-mail address on the sticker. Six books are heading off to Japan and other countries in that area next week. Also next week 3 more tomes will be off to sunny Mexico to fun in the sun. If you have any feedback please enter it in the comment box below the post. I'm just finishing up a pretty interesting book called "A History Of Reading" by Alberto Manguel. It's a good historical analysis of what it means and how we came to be  readers of words. This is one book I won't part with anytime soon. The chapter called "Metaphors of Reading" was one of my favourites.

One of the reasons I started this blog centred around this nagging feeling that something wasn't right about  how information was being disseminated throughout society. It seems to me that we and the social groups we belong to are increasingly becoming dependent on visual sets of cues with little or no written words  of explanation.  I find this particularly prominent within the digital world where e-mails messages are full of symbols such as smiley faces to indicate happiness, acronyms for short phrase LOL, where facebook is a giant photo album where one picture can invoke an entire short story of one's life. Let alone youtube where users up load videos of themselves exposing their darkest secrets or hoping to be discovered and where fifteen minutes of fame is just around the digital corner. Let's not forget Twitter where 140 characters is all you're aloud to get your point across. No longer is it necessary or even acceptable to eloquently express oneself to others for fear of infringing too long on their precious time. Because it is time and our supposed lack thereof that drives us to demand quick images that are easier to interpret and ask for shorter sentences supposedly packed with information so as not to delay or slow us  from our next task. What does this all mean for the act of reading? Will we eventually as a society move away from reading as an act of learning and leisure?  Something to invigorate our minds with untold interpretations of the same words by so many others and where these differing opinions enter into a dialogue from which new and exciting ideas emerge. Can this occur within the context of the digital world which seems to be ever so much progressively dominating our cultural milieu. As much as I see these various digital forms as necessary and worthwhile tools  I can't help getting that nagging feeling every time I use one of these tools that it's taking away, possibly forever, my ability to dedicate the needed time for reading. From this I can't help wandering what the future of reading will be.

I would like to invite everyone who reads this post to engage in dialogue on the "future of reading". You can join the conversation on The Hobo Tomes facebook page. Just enter the discussion section where I will post the question or if you want to post a comment you can do that here underneath this post.

 

Do You Have An Idea?

I'm involved with another project that just had its organizing meeting on March 4th. It's called Awesome Calgary. Check out our site at awesomecalgary.org. We give away money for creative ideas that will contribute the overall good of the Calgary community. Send us your ideas by following the application process set out on the site. I will have another blog post later today and I will also post my first discussion question in the discussion section of The Hobo Tomes Project Facebook page also later today.