I started about 6 or 7 years ago collecting all those newspaper clippings about us or events we've participated in (etc.), pub schedules, gig posters, Bob Nilson caricatures, souvenirs, etcet, etcet into page protectors and collecting those into 3-ring binders. Called it "Life's Melody" and started out with 3 binders. I now have 24 and everything is not in them. Some of the earlier ones have several years per binder, but the more recent ones have several binders per year. And I started adding photos. And I have a "calendar" in front of what happened during that year (culled from the notes on my calendars which I've compulsively kept). There are still some accumulations (like the Stone Church calendars from the '80s) which have not been added -- but only because I can't FIND them!

I've got a whole ROOM (it seems) full of scraps of scribbled paper which needs to have SOMETHING done with it -- archived in an electronic file, transferred to a list, calendar, archive. Mostly for the past 40-ish years I've just kept everything on 3x5 file cards -- addresses, notes for speeches I've given, interesting things heard or seen, quotations from books or articles And I've got many file drawers filled with the cards. (Hmmm...Tom and I spent hours reading them on one of our first dates.) Alas, they aren't actually organized so I can FIND anything. I've started any number of times, but...

There used to be a great computer program -- very simple and elegant -- whose interface was a 3x5 filecard -- and everything was completely searchable. By the time I found out about it, the company that owned it made it more complicated, then more expensive, then stopped supporting it and I think it reverted to the developer. But now I can't remember what it was called. Sigh. I know I still have a demo around on one of my archive discs (probably a Zip disc). But it was best (to my mind) when it was in its simplest form -- because then it acted like that collection of scribbles ... but searchable!

Linn, who evidently has left her brain in her sock drawer