Nothing New Under the Sun?

It has been said that the "information age" has changed all the old paradigms, has rendered old truths to be invalid.

Perhaps.

But maybe it has just sped up things more.

I stumbled on an interesting blog recently that illustrates what I mean.

In the not-so-long ago days before the internet... or even Television. When Radio was a novelty, and few private homes had a phone line, we had blogging of a sort.

They just called it writting letters.

Of course, instead of instant-mass media, it was usually addressed to just one person, or perhaps a small intimate group like a family.

The media was different, but the purpose largely the same.

During WWI, a young soldier with the British 9th Battalion, York and Lancaster Regiment, sent letters to his wife and other family members from the front. In their entirety, they constitute a runnning dialog on the things that mattered most to him (and by extrapolation, one can assume most of the soldiers in the same situation).

Private Harry Lamin's grandson has established a blog, www.wwar1.blogspot.com, and is posting the individual letters on the dates they were written plus 90 years. Thus, a letter written by the Private from the trenches of France on July 1, 1917, was posted on July 1st, 2007. And so on.

90 years ago, the battles were still raging in France, it was the summer of 1918. The cannons did not fall silent until November 11th, so there are 5 more months of blog entries to look forward to... if Private Lamin survived, which his grandson is not saying. An intriguing concept for a blog, methinks.

Once we accept that freedom is not free, we owe it to those who have paid for it to understand what they went through for us. This blog provides just such an opportunity to learn. I recommend it.

CP