Hello, Discoverylover!

It’s me – Skyring the Markeroon!

After reading your letter about Markeroni.com, I decided to go take another look. As it turns out, I joined Markeroni five years ago, but never figured out how to log snarfs.*

Linda, the technogoddess who runs Markeroni, is one of my heroes, and I joined up as a token of support. Something about the process was wrong for me, and although I took a few photographs, I never logged my snarfs.

The site has been redesigned and reprogrammed a few times since, and I was able to log a snarf or two on returning to the site. I’ve even collected a heart on what was very likely my first snarf. I know I took a photograph of a plaque outside the Old Executive Office Building in January 2005, but whether it was the day before or the day after this one, I don’t recall now.

Meeting my then Bestest BookCrossing Buddy Sparky-Redhead in Richmond was pure delight. For years we’d been exchanging care packages and books, chatting in the BookCrossing forums, sharing news of dogs and adventures. How could I travel to Washington DC and not go the extra mile to see her?

She was every bit as delightful in the flesh as in the forums. For half a day we looked through the Virginia State House, chatted to the delegates, strolled the snowy streets, checked out the Museum of the Confederacy and the Confederate White House, and inspected St John’s Church, where Patrick Henry delivered his fiery “Give me liberty, or give me death!” speech.

Outside, on the street, was this historical marker, and I handed Sparky-Redhead the camera. To tell the truth, I’d always considered the American South to be a land of languid lushness, a semi-tropical place of warmth and ease, but here I was, fair in the capital of the Old South, and there was not a plantation nor a mint julep in sight. A hot rum toddy would have been more appropriate.

There’s a sense of wonder, a sense of place about historical markers. You stand there, the fast food restaurants across the way, the Winnebagos speeding past, and you think, this is where George Washington stood. Or George III, or Horatio Nelson, or the inventor of Spandex at some crucial life moment. For a moment, you and history share the same place, and all that separates you and the shot that killed Kennedy is time.

And a plaque.

Yours aye,
Skyring

* Snarfing – the act of recording a visit to a historical marker.

“…Everything is illuminated in the light of the past. It is always along the side of us, on the inside, looking out.”

– Everything Is Illuminated
> (2005)

Hey Skyring,

I finally figured out something to write about! One of my favourite sites, Markeroni celebrated its 7th birthday last week, so I thought I could write about that

Markeroni was started by a BookCrosser and history geek (heh, just like me!). She describes the beginning of Markeroni like this:

Once upon a time Linda [the Chief Markeroon] was about to set out on a month-long solo motorcycle tour to complete a treasure hunt that involved hunting for historical markers. Unfortunately, her bike broke two gears two days before departure day and she spent that summer dismantling her engine instead.

She thought about what could replace the trip and decided that a series of shorter trips to visit all of California’s state historical markers would be a good compromise. She decided to build a website to chronicle this so that others could find the markers, which seemed to move around at night.

Then she discovered that not only did every state in the USA have markers, so did the Canadian provinces, and in fact there are probably markers in every country in the world.

Suddenly, Markeroni got a great deal bigger.

These days it’s got a fair few members, most of us at least a little bit crazy, and a fair few markers logged on the site – I’ve got about 30 so far (giving me an orange star!), but I haven’t logged all of the ones I’ve been to so far – thats one of the good things about my job, every weekend I’m in a new place with new historical markers! Just last weekend I went for a walk and found a couple of historical markers that I need to ‘snarf’ as we call it

Anyway, I got into it when an ex told me I should join after we did a trip around the South Island and I made him wait for me every time we went passed a war memorial (which pretty much every town here has, usually in a fairly central place, although often hard to find if you’re actually looking for them I find!)

It’s a lot of fun, looking for these markers, or even not looking for them, but just stopping suddenly on the road to take random photographs of these random markers!

Anyway, hey Skyring, one more thing -

RTS!

DL

Hello, Discoverylover!

It’s me, emerging into the sunshine of a clear blue winter day.

Years ago, well, decades really, I joined the Citizen Military Forces University Regiment, a part-time group that was more of a social club than a military unit. It was often said that a direct order was a topic for discussion rather than an action directive. We were soldiers, because we wore the uniform, but heaven help Australia if we undergraduates ever took the field in earnest!

I loved it. I made a lot of great friends, drank a lot of beer, did some cool things like romp around the Gold Coast in inflatable boats or bounce through the bush in armoured vehicles, and made enough money to add comfort to my spartan student years.

But there comes a moment in the career of every Australian and New Zealand soldier, and while for the sergeant or corporal giving an order to “line up over there” or something equally banal, for the green recruit it’s a moment they’ll never forget. The joke becomes serious.

“Tuck that shirt in, digger!”, a sergeant will growl and move on, leaving the young soldier standing, his jaw hanging open.

“Huh? What did he call me? Are my ears working? Did he really call me a Digger?”

The soldier tucks in his shirt and strides off, suddenly five metres tall and made of steel. He’s a Digger!

And it’s true. Soldiers in the Australian Army are still called diggers. Nearly a hundred years since the colonial soldiers dug trenches in the steep hills of Anzac Cove, the legend lives on.

We Arts and Economics and Science students, hair on our collars, boots unpolished, square-gaiting across the parade ground, we were Diggers. Just like the heroes of old. The old-timers with chests full of medals. The defenders of Tobruk, the jungle-fighters of Malaya and Vietnam.

We were the legacy. We were diggers.

Yours aye,
Skyring

THE DIGGER’S LEGACY

Did you think that we’d forget you mate
With the slow march of the years?
That as time passed we’d wipe the slate
Of your sorrow and your tears?
Did you think we’d scorn your sacrifice
And find no honour in the debt?
When your lives paid our freedom’s price
How then could we forget?

And that’s the Diggers’ legacy
The freedom we hold yet
We never can repay them
And we never should forget

Did you think we’d take for granted
All you fought to keep alive?
That the seeds your courage planted
Would struggle to survive?
When mothers fathers daughters sons
Gave their blood and tears and sweat
To nourish a peace so dearly won
How then could we forget?

A Digger stands in every town
On solemn sad parade
While beneath his feet as the years roll round
The names there slowly fade
But around him in the strong embrace
Of the freedom he defended
A nation sure of pride and place
Reaches for the vision splendid.

Song Copyright Eric Bogle

(From Small Miracles)

Sorry to go on like this! You’ve got me onto a topic that I’ll write on for hours! This is one of my favourite war songs. I can understand why ANZAC Day is having a revival – this song talks about the Diggers’ legacy and how we can’t forget, but I think that is part of what their legacy is, that we can forget – not that we forget what they gave for us, but that we aren’t still going through it, that we don’t know those horrors.

There’s another song I like a lot – Loyal by Dave Dobbyn. One of my favourite lines is ‘history’s here and now’ – it’s so true! Like what you were staying about the past not being the distant – it seems to me that it makes making a difference much easier when you think about how the smallest actions can have such huge repercussions, either good, or bad, and pretty soon what happened will be history and you might have changed it. I hope that makes sense!

I’m gonna end this now, I thought I had more to say, but I can’t think of what it was now (plus I’m exhausted from waking up several times a night to throw pillows at snoring colleagues for the last couple of nights :s)

RTS!
Discoverylover