There's nothing common about humanity

On my 19th birthday my college roommate gave me a blank book. She told me that since I loved to read I should keep a commonplace book. After seeing the puzzled look on my face, she told me that a commonplace book was a blank book people use to write down passages and quotes they like. This was something that was right up my alley.

That was in 1988 and I've been keeping commonplace books ever since. I've filled one completely and gotten close on a second one. Three years ago I decided to start uploading my current commonplace book on a blog so that I would have another record of it (in case of loss) and to spread the word about some excellent books. I've only mentioned it once or twice and have just left it there for my own use. At this point, I only update it when I write a new passage in the book, and that tends to be rare anymore. The format is simple, a passage, followed by the book or movie it came from (when available) and the date I wrote it in the book. Nothing dramatic, of course.

Last weekend I decided to change things on the blog a bit. I went through all 400 posts and I added links to each date; the links are from something that was written or happened on that day. There are some really cool little stories and pictures attached to those dates! You might find the NASA picture of the day or a story about post traumatic stress disorder in Cambodian refugees. All you have to do is click on the date below the amazon linked book or DVD. Be sure to click on the date, not the amazon link. Unless you want to buy the book, of course.

The quilt of human understanding, action, and consequences is a wonderful thing to view. In my googling I was struck by the variety of issues we have faced and the sameness of the issues we continue to grapple with; you know the cliche about change and staying the same. I can't say that much has changed since 1994 when I wrote the first passage in that book, but at least we are still in the fight. We still care about each other and we still live with as much passion as our fragile bodies will allow. We are still so unerringly funny to watch.

I've linked the blog in this post a couple of times, and here is the link in case you missed it: http://www.commonplacebooks.blogspot.com/

This post only has paragraphs if I write something down here. Um... weird!