Today as part of the Write by the Rails Endless Possibilities Blogtour, I’m happy to introduce Linda D Johnston to you all.
I believe in the importance of the written word and its role in our history, whether the author is a famous statesman, a poet, or a woman inviting her sister to a birthday celebration.
This past June I had a chance to see an example of such a birthday invitation, written in Latin, found at Vindolanda, the site of a Roman fort just south of Hadrian’s Wall. The fort, first settled in 80 A.D., guarded the northernmost frontier of the Roman Empire in England and housed soldiers and their families.
When Claudia Severa wrote the words, “I shall expect you sister. Farewell, sister my dearest soul, as I hope to prosper, and hail,” to Suplicia Lepidina, she could never have imagined that 1900 years later so many people would see them and learn so much from the tiny wooden tablet they were written on. Historians have gained a much better understanding of how the people at Vindolanda lived from the hundreds of additional tablets they found at this site that predates Hadrian’s Wall by about forty years.
Whether written on wood or paper, words from everyday individuals become part of the human story, a touchstone to the past. In my own research, I have many opportunities to read personal diaries and letters from the past. Each document has sent me on an adventure where I encountered someone new in a place I might otherwise not have discovered. Will electronic documents have the same impact as something tactile like wood or paper? I am not sure.  But one thing is certain, whatever medium we use, we must choose our words carefully, as Claudia did. Who knows who might see them hundreds of years from now?
Thank you, Pip, for letting me be a guest today!
Writer and artist Linda S. Johnston enjoys combining history, art, and nature in her writing. Her first book, Hope Amid Hardship: Pioneer Voices from Kansas Territory, is a collection of pioneer writings on the happy side of life in early Kansas and includes watercolor sketches throughout. To learn more about Linda and her writing, please visit www.lindasjohnston.com