At the Library

I've decided to keep a record, online, of my pursuit of the ever-elusive personal essay that I'm writing for a class. It's due not this coming Monday, but the next - the 15th of November. I have ten days to complete this search.

Blogging about it is probably not going to help.

ANYWAY.

I want to ask my dad about his dad, the grandfather I've never known. I want to use the internet to see if what, if anything, I can find out about his personal history. I want to compare that information to what I can find about other people, because the proliferation of personal computers (a category that I'm using to include things like cell phones and other mobile devices, among other things) has completely (irrevocably?) changed how we conceive of and record history.

Twitter, Facebook, blogs... personal histories. My grandfather wrote one, just a brief autobiography, for a class, I believe during his time at the University of Iowa - which would have been shortly after his time in the European Theater during WWII. He typed this autobiography, on a typewriter; he died in 1965. His widow, my grandmother, someone I grew up with even if I didn't know her very well in retrospect, took to computers fairly well - even though she used AOL. She emailed. It was adorable.

I'm at the UI main library now, after coming from the class for which I have to write this essay. My friend Hannah is scouting for information about HER grandfather, a former professor here, at the same time. Our searches have overlapped, I guess, and now we're going to pre-purchase tickets for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part One. More on this later.