You’re just memories, held in glass.
Soon enough, that will be true of the oldest publication in the Cordillera. Oldest and perhaps the most respected, the most venerable—so much so that even as a writer and editor for a competitor publication, I have to cede that level of respect as a minimum.
My path is merely a tangent on the timeline of the Baguio Midland Courier. I spent a three-month internship there, and while I cannot claim that I learned much of what keeps me in this industry there in that time (three months is hardly a lot of time to learn, wish I had more), I did walk away with great respect for the veterans of the journalism industry.
(I also walked away with the thought that I do not quite qualify as a journalist, which persists to today. Impostor syndrome and all that.)
So when it was initially announced that this living archive of history was to shut down, my first thought was not that opportunities had opened up for us—it was my fourth—but a quiet grief, a small morning of mourning.
But it is lucky for us that the management of the Courier knows exactly how valuable what they have done for the public is, so it needs to be preserved in any way possible. Copies of issues have been handed over to public libraries and we have their word that efforts are being undertaken to have digital archives of this storied paper. And as a newspaper, their word is sterling currency.
Hence, the memories, held in glass. Preserved in digital amber. Historians of the future will observe these little slices of what Baguio was, little slices of the zeitgeist of a certain month in a certain year.
Soon enough, these memories will become more and more accessible. Today, they are in the libraries, maybe tomorrow they will be on the Internet. And anyone versed in the Internet knows that once it’s there, it’s there.
Maybe in a Crichton twist, the amber of the Courier archives gets extracted from and the DNA extract will be used to revive the old cowboy. It is entirely possible that he comes back to stay, or even comes back just for a brief period.
But memory or not, time marches forward. Annihilation is inevitable, no matter how storied the institution or individual. Everything will one day be forgot; we can only hope to extend the lifespan of a memory beyond its years.
That inevitability only makes it more valiant and important that we preserve what we can. Impermanence is the name of the world. No matter how permanent it seems, we are only forestalling the inevitable. The servers will fill up and disappear, the archived papers will invariably fade and decay, and the memories will die with those who held them.
Is it not beautiful that in spite of this, we cling so tightly to life? To memory? Life is brilliant. Beautiful. It enchants us, to the point of obsession. And no matter how empty the forgotten before and the unknown beyond may be, this beauty makes it all worthwhile.
