Some of the notes I’ve kept — there are very, very few.
When I was subpoenaed to testify in Jim Harrison’s trial in 2018, I was first asked to meet with the prosecutor, David Pascoe. He wanted me to testify about a long-ago (2006) blog post regarding an interview with Rep. Harrison.
Also, he wanted my notes from that interview. I told him that really wasn’t practical, and wouldn’t be helpful even if I produced them. First, there was thge problem of my handwriting. Second, I seldom wrote down full direct quotes (unless something the speaker said was so obviously a quote I would use that I thought it worth the time), because I was a slow note-taker for a journalist. My notes were so sketchy that I always had to write within a day or two of taking them to remember what they referred to. They would mean very little to me now, and nothing to anyone else.
Finally, I seriously doubted that I could produce them before the trial, even if I quit James Smith’s campaign and did nothing but search through the pile of boxes in my garage until I found what he thought he wanted.
So he dropped that idea, to my great relief.
Soon, I won’t have to worry about such subpeonas, because I’m getting rid of most of the notes.
The end of last week, we bought a car. A new car. Believe it or not, it’s the first new car we’ve bought since 1986. Yep, at least 38 years. We’ve gone with “previously owned” on every subsequent purchase. We were sick of the stress of constantly having to come up with money for repairs, and we wanted something with a warranty.
It’s a middle-of-the-road — in terms of cost — Toyota, but in unadjusted dollars, it cost more than the first house we bought, back in 1980.
So we want to take good care of this vehicle — which means parking it in the garage. Which we use for other purposes now, mostly (measured by cubic feet) storage.
Those couple of dozen boxes have got to go. They’ve been piled up in a sort of uneven ziggurat right next to the steps leading into the house. They’ve been covered with a big sheet of heavy plastic, which (I’m now finding) didn’t protect them as well as I’d hoped.
The going is slow, because I’m going through every sheet of paper in each box. (I’ve never been a person for blithely throwing things away.) I’m doing it fairly quickly, but it still takes maybe an hour per box. I was discouraged by the result on the first box, because I eliminated less than half the contents. But that was stuff from college days, and my decade at The Jackson (Tenn.) Sun, right after school. Which means I had winnowed through that several times before.
One thing that amazes me is the time I spent on administrative matters while putting out a newspaper — especially the correspondence from the days before we had printers that produced something of letter quality. Letters to readers, letters to prospective reporters (I was over all the news reporters at the Sun), letters to people running some conference I was about to go to. All produced on a typewriter. All that time spent on things that I really don’t care about now (which make up most of the stuff I did toss out). Wow, the energy I had in my late 20s.
Since that box, things have gone much better. I’ve thrown away something like 90-95 percent of each box. And a LOT of that is notes from the ’90s and double-aughts. Still haven’t run across those Harrison notes, though.
But I have run across a few notes here and there that I’ve pulled out to keep. Sometimes because of the interesting topic, but mostly because of the people being interviewed — people I like or enjoyed talking with (Joe Riley, Fritz Hollings, John McCain, Joe Biden), people I found completely appalling (Grover Norquist, for instance) or people who have subsequently become more widely interesting (like Nikki Haley).
I put a few of those together on my scanner so you could see the kind I’m talking about. I have a long way to go — including the dreaded box of an odd shape (like a cubic yard) that I know is nothing but notes. Who knows what I’ll find next?
In any case, I’m making gradual progress. But I thought I’d tell you because while there are always a lot of things preventing me from having time to blog these days, this is one of the bigger ones right now…
As of right now, I’ve eliminated 11 boxes. This is what’s left of the pile…
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Ever hear of Swedish Death Cleaning? If you don’t toss stuff, guess who will. Cleaning out our garage I make the mistake of asking my wife if I can discard some of her things. Of course she says no. If I didn’t ask and just toss, there’s a 99% chance she would never know. But that 1% chance would get me killed.
We have the opposite situation. The easiest way to get rid of it all would be to urge my wife to do whatever she wants with it. But of course, a moment later I would be hollering, “But don’t throw THAT out!”
As I reflect on nearly seventy years of life, I find myself in a unique moment of transition. I too am sorting through decades of memories—acknowledging their weight, their beauty, and their lessons. This process is challenging, interesting, and often deeply emotional. There are moments of profound sadness as I bid farewell to parts of my past, but there is also an undeniable sense of renewal.
Now, as I prepare to settle down with a wife and children from the Philippines, the journey takes on a new dimension. We plan to build our home, not in one place, but through the experiences we will share as we travel the world together. The act of “putting away” my memories is not about discarding them; it’s about honoring them while making room for the life we are creating.
Moving forward requires courage. It demands that we let go of what no longer serves us and embrace the uncertainty of what lies ahead. Yet, in doing so, we find the freedom to grow, to love, and to create new memories. This is not just a closing of old chapters but the opening of a story yet to be written—a story of connection, exploration, and hope.
Life’s journey is never linear. It winds through joy and sorrow, leaving us with a mosaic of experiences that shape who we are. Today, I choose to move forward. I choose to move on. And in doing so, I celebrate the life I’ve lived and the adventures yet to come.
I was in rural Western New York State yesterday, now Utah. Thanksgiving in Utah, then my 71st birthday and Christmas in the Philippines. The new year brings me back to the United States, and we hope this time we are together. You may have heard immigration is an issue in our country.
Here’s to letting go and embracing what’s next. Enjoy the Holidays!