Sunday, September 29, 2013

Sepia Saturday 196 : In Search Of The Box Room Marked Understanding


Our Sepia Saturday prompt this week features a young chap ill in bed. It is rather suitable because I have been suffering myself recently and had to take to my bed most of yesterday. My Sepia Saturday post has therefore become a Sepia Sunday post. I did manage to post a short explanation of the circumstances yesterday, but in case you didn't see it, I am publishing it again here.

However, I am now well on the road to recovery and able to share an old family photograph about which I know very little. I have a feeling that I may have posted this picture of an unknown girl lying in a wicker bed before, but my image filing system is not what it should be. It should be a system that records what the photograph is, where the photograph has been used, where the original high quality scan can be found, and where the web-sized jpeg resides. But it is merely a plastic box full of old photographs.

I long for organisation. I long for a system that can remind me what I did yesterday and what I am due to do tomorrow. I don't want the past to be a different country, I want it to seamlessly merge with the future. I would like to know whether I ever managed to work out who these three women are, and what were the circumstances of this rather sad photograph.

But such a system seems to be beyond me. I am fated to endlessly re-speculate, constantly walk down the same corridor, forever searching for the box-room marked "understanding". It is a lonely and exhausting quest. I think I need a nice glass of beer to help me on my way.

As you sip your beer why not pop over to the Sepia Saturday Blog and see what everybody else was up to yesterday.

27 comments:

  1. I am on that same journey, Alan. In fact, I suspect you are even better organized than I.

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  2. Oh my gosh! This reminds me so much of a photograph of my mother taken in the 1930s when she was in a TB sanitarium. She didn't ever have TB but my grandparents were devastated by the sudden loss of their son in 1937 from appendicitis and septicaemia and were determined their only surviving child would not die. So they stuck her in a TB San. Weird eh? Like me she was simply a sickly child who got every germ going the rounds and, I guess, was lucky to escape the San virtually unscathed. Although much fatter because of all the milk they made her drink.

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    1. Georgina, you really should join in with Sepia Saturday.

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    2. Erm.... I don't know how (sorry)

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  3. Hope that you are all recovered soon Alan.

    I read somewhere once that in times gone past, taking a patient outside for sun shine and vitamin D was one of the better remedies for illness. This wicker bed seems to confirm this. Something that we don't do today.

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    1. My mother's hospital bed was out on a balcony is all weathers she said. Which explains why she wore a thick dressing gown most of the time. This patient's lovely wicker bed looks to me as though she was permanently bed-bound poor thing. At least Mummy was able to get up; she used to collect all the revolting food from the patients who could not get out of bed and throw it into the rhododendrons when the nurses weren't looking.

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  4. I can sometimes find my photos on my blog before I upload another one by searching for the possible title to the photo. Works sometimes, sometimes it doesn't. I often get lost wandering among past posts that I forgot I ever did. I hope whoever the sick child is that they recovered, grew up and had a happy life.

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  5. It could be rather cozy, napping away a cold in a wicker buggy, under all the cozy blankets. I do hope the girl was neither a TB nor a polio patient, which probably was the case.

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  6. I though of TB patients when I saw this as well.
    Google + is playing silly b,,,,,,s with my filing of photos in albums currently; it's getting to be a pain.

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  7. Is this a test to see if we were paying attention yesterday? A head cold now is it? Hmmmmm. I hope you'll soon be fully recovered.

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    1. Yesterday I made the classic statistical error of assuming that correlation meant causation. I assumed that just because I had consumed a plentiful supply of alcohol it had somehow caused the feeling of less than optimal well being that I was experiencing. On calm reflection I have realised that the cause was something else which is just as well as I have an Old Gits meeting on Tuesday

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  8. I suppose if I was sick, laying in that lovely wicker bed would lift my spirits a bit! :)

    Glad you're better today! So let me put those two messages together...you caught a cold from your son and tried to cure it with a few too many drinks? haha.

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  9. To me these three look pretty happy about something. Maybe the patient is on the mend.
    As far as organization goes, don't worry. It'll never happen. I know. I'm one of the most disorganized you could find.

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  10. We regard a cold - especially a head cold - as a simple thing hardly worth mentioning or worrying about. Nonetheless you can feel utterly miserable if you have one! Glad you feel better today. Fortunately most of our photos on my side of the family - old & new - are either in albums, or categorized. Recently, however, my sister-in-law sent us a whole big box of old photos & albums dating back into the 1800's from my husband's side of the family - many without any identification & I've been trying to put those in some sort of order. Fortunately, one of my husband's aunts is still living & has offered to help me put names to pictures as best she can, so YEA for that! Incidentally, the woman in the wicker bed in your posted photo reminds me of when our daughter was recovering from her accident & the hospital she was in at the time would put her in a big padded recliner-type chair with pillows to prop her up & straps to keep her from falling off so I could wheel her outside to get some fresh air & see some different scenery. She doesn't remember any of that - which is good. And now, of course, she gets around on her own, inside or out, any way she wishes. :))

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  11. An interesting bed it looks awfully like a coffin to me. She seems quite happy though, probably happy to be outside. It is a while since I contributed and I have a string of excuses: been overseas, been sick, scanner been to get fixed. Hope you are feeling better I am slowly coming good.

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  12. You remind me of myself in so many ways...but you knew that...thank you for your kind comment about my poetry...

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  13. First of all, feel better.

    And system? Do people actually have systems? I've always relied on the "where did I last see it" system which I find is working less and less as I age. This in turn means that when I do come upon something it's often a surprise with "Oh, I'd forgotten about this!" Saves buying new things when the old things become new finds.

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  14. An excellent photo, Alan, even if without annotations real or imagined. Computers are supposed to improve our organizational life but I find they only create more levels of virtual shoe boxes. I hope you soon return to good health and good beer.

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  15. A really interesting photo. I wonder if the child was permanently incapacitated. It looks like the wicker bed was more 'permanent' than that used for a temporary illness.

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  16. Oh Alan ... what a simply marvellous post. I so so empathise with you and the longing for a system...will I ever get there...I suspect not. Ah well. So be it. And I am with Diane...that does look awfully like a coffin....

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  17. That cover looks like a bodybag for the morgue...
    Just zip her up!!
    Get well soon!!
    :)~
    HUGZ

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  18. That is very odd looking to me.
    I have to admit that I am known as a very anal person and all the old photos and souvenirs have been scanned and backed up in several places...

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  19. That's a fascinating photo!

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  20. Looks a bit like a polio bed to me, not quite an iron lung but similarities.
    I feel like you re the organisation of photos especially after mum and dad's last visit and the scanning of over 400 photos I still have to label! Oh well, that's me for Sepia Saturday for at least the next year!

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  21. I'm glad you are feeling better. Beer is good medicine!

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  22. hey nice post meh, I love your style of blogging here. this post reminded me of an equally interesting post that I read some time ago on Daniel Uyi's blog: How To Deal With Guys .
    keep up the good work friend. I will be back to read more of your posts.

    Regards

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  23. When you find that type of organization, please share as I am in need of it also:)

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