I only recently discovered that a critical blog on race, ethnicity, and racism social science theory and research that I relied on during graduate school (to learn about new work and to share my own insights on recent events) appears to have gone defunct. While I did find my personal contributions using the Wayback Machine over at Internet Archive…I realize that there is going to be an increasing need for me to not only keep my own copies of whatever I submit to these outlets stored somewhere other than the “cloud”…but that I probably will need to use this blog to keep my public writing available for as long as I’m able.

I am thinking about all the writers who have had their digital footprint erased with the folding of various online outlets or who have no digital footprint whatsoever because their work was in print and never converted to digital.

I am thinking about how many thinkers become “unknown” when all the people who read their work are no longer around and they didn’t manage to build enough of a reputation that subsequent generations after them are still interested in their work or are assigned it in school. I am thinking about what it means to maintain our own archives and physical libraries.

With my maternal grandmother’s recent passing, my sisters and I have discovered a lot of “analog” (and some digital) detritus hidden or stored around her home — the many copies of receipts, bills, and important documents, printouts of news stories and recipes or pages cut from magazines, SO MANY MAGAZINES, scraps of images to reference for oil paintings, old VHS home videos from me and my siblings’ and cousins’ childhoods, hard copy photos and polaroids, and even CD-ROMs full of photos. I am hoping to pull these images off these discs to print hard copies that will last longer (yes, putting your data on discs or even hard drives isn’t a permanent solution). I’m trying not to stress myself out with thoughts of what my nieces and nephews or whoever ends up responsible for the detritus of my life will do with all of my physical and digital things. If keeping a record of my life and work will really matter all that much in the long arc of the universe.

Anyhow… my sabbatical seems like an ideal opportunity to figure how much of my writing needs to find a new place to live. It’s bittersweet but also a great reminder that we probably put too much trust in the internet being “forever.”