Today I started making a photo album for Lucy. It's really for us, too. We'll all enjoy looking through them together one day. I know that nowadays people don't really make photo albums anymore. Everything is stored digitally on computers and phones. And so many photos get lost or forgotten about, never looked at. Lots of photos of mine from college that existed digitally have vanished to who knows where since I've bought new computers and moved files around, etc. Of course, physical prints get lost, too. You put them away in boxes, then you move to a new house, and another new house, and god only knows where they are now. But, keeping physical prints is important to me, not because files get lost and forgotten in digital space, but because there's something meaningful about holding and looking at a physical photograph. It's just not the same when you look at it on a screen. Flipping through old photos is a physical and social act that can't be replicated by crowding around a computer, just like playing Words with Friends on your phone is not the same as playing Scrabble around the coffee table. When Lucy grows up, she'll probably be one of very few people her age with an actual photo album. It even has magnetic pages, just like mine from the 1980s. We can slide in a 4x6 or a 4x5 or an mini polaroid or an iPhone print-out all in the same book. I think she'll enjoy looking at it one day. I will, anyway.
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