Aging Gracefully

Summer Fundraiser 2013, Day 6

We’ve been blogging at Gates of Vienna for almost nine years now, and for the last five or six of those we have been eking out an existence by doing what we’re doing right now: asking readers who like what we do to donate to the upkeep of the blog and the maintenance of its bloggers.

Tip jarOur site has changed over the years, adapting to new conditions, venturing ever further into areas of interest, accumulating more and more contributors, translators, and tipsters. Yet the essence of it remains the same; it has simply settled in and become more of itself.

The theme of this week’s fundraiser is the amplitude of time. Tonight I’d like to look at the accumulation of the effects of the passage of time, or what is commonly known as “aging”. Given the fashionable currents of our era, aging is generally seen in a negative light. Yet it does not have to be cognized in that fashion, nor has it always been understood that way.

Take, for example, a newly-constructed house. There is no way in which the character of age can be artificially conferred upon that house, no matter how much money is spent on brick walks, gingerbread, flower gardens and shrubs. The biggest trees that can be hauled from the nursery and planted around it will be unable to create an august demeanor for that building. Only slow the passage of time can manage it.

And so the roofline begins to sag. Pieces of siding warp or split and are replaced, but the new paint is not quite the same color. Moss grows along the brick foundations. The trees mature and grow to shade the house, occasionally dropping branches onto the roof. Over the decades additions accrete onto the back and sides of the main structure like barnacles on a pier. Outbuildings and grape arbors materialize at odd locations on the grounds. A kitschy statue of a faun mysteriously appears by the koi pond.

The house, in a word, develops character. This can only happen to a place that has been continuously called home by generations of people.

After seventy-five or a hundred years, the now august character of a once-new house may be observed. If it is occupied by multiple generations of the same family for all those years, its character is even stronger.

Dymphna and I used to know a house that had been in the same family for two hundred years, since the early nineteenth century. It was a big old brick monster, designed in Jeffersonian fashion with an orientation of the main hallway that caught the sunrise at the summer solstice through a fanlight over the east entrance.

For two hundred years successive generations of the same family had lived in that house, bought more furniture, and accumulated stuff, so that some of the big rooms had been so clogged up with clutter that there were only narrow passages down the center. It was cold and drafty during the winter, and hot and stuffy during the summer. The ancient smell of wood smoke had worked its way into every crevice of the structure.

But, boy, did that house have character.

The occupants were a couple from the World War II generation, and when they died the place passed into the hands of the grandchildren, who were less attached to it — or perhaps unable to afford to keep it. First they sold the logging rights, and the hundreds of acres of pines and ancient hardwoods that used to surround the house were clear-cut. Then the house itself was sold. I don’t know what happened to all that old stuff, or whether the new owners made changes to the place — I haven’t been down the driveway since the grandparents died.

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This blog is like that house, although much younger — no more than middle-aged, as such things go. But we may hope that it has developed its own character.

What began as experimental novelties some years ago have now become institutions. The news feed, for example, or the cultural enrichment series. They have acquired their own protocols and traditions, as if they were somehow independent entities, not entirely under the control of the blog’s owners.

Or the quarterly process of fundraising. What began as an ad-hoc arrangement seven years ago has gradually become a settled ritual. One of us thinks up a theme, and then we take turns writing to the theme every night for the seven days of our bleg. It presents us with a challenge, to be forced to write something under a deadline and constrained by a topic.

Sometimes I plan what I’m going to write well in advance; other times I stare at a blank white Word document at eleven o’clock at night and think, What the heck am I going to say?

It’s a tough process, occasionally fun, but always difficult.

Yet with the passage of time, it builds character.

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Yesterday’s donors came from:

Stateside: California, Georgia, Montana, New York, and Texas.

Near Abroad: Canada

Far Abroad: Australia, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, and the UK

Thank you all once again for helping us build and maintain this house.

The tip jar in the text above is just for decoration. To donate, click the tin cup on our sidebar, or the donate button, on the main page. If you prefer a monthly subscription, click the “subscribe” button.

One thought on “Aging Gracefully

  1. Great story about the house, and life. I’m not (quite) as old as that house but sometimes I feel like it! I’ve got Gates of Vienna as my I.E. homepage so I don’t miss anything. Thanks for all your efforts and guts in doing it. I’m hitting the donation tin cup now.

    Thanks.
    Steve

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