Links with the recent past (4) : work, play, war and peace

Abstract

The tendency of throwing away objects of the past, to gain more space and have less to worry about, prevails in many homes. Perhaps during this last decade some consciousness has developed in our Islands to retain various household objects which appear to be gaining popularity as antique dealers items, and which may be quaint and decorative, and a relief from the mass-produced modern ones, possessed by everybody else. However, there is still a great deal of loss of other objects, which appear of no consequence, as old toys, and small items of printed matter, and others which do not have much of a decorative or antique value. If one is merely after financial profit, many objects would not be of much interest; many odds and ends in the home, remnants of the past, may appear superfluous, but they may be of sentimental or educational value, especially for later generations, as they will revive episodes from the life of the people. It is regrettable that most of what has been written for historical purposes, has greatly ignored the intimate, daily life of the human beings who, after all, were the real-life actors of history in our Islands. The various aspects of folklore can supply the in formation which historical works have excluded. Since folklore is much more based on the daily intimacies of human activities, all scraps of 111aterial, even the most worthless from the lucrative point of view, can be an important document or evidence, to shed light on human ordeals of the past. Because of the rapid environmental changes due to the norms of progress , a space of 50 years will cause a large number of household or other items to become obsolete, and retained only for sentimental reasons. Whatever the reasons for which such relics are retained, their conservation is always an asset, and if not wanted by the individual should find their way to the repositories of museums, to maintain a link with irretrievable times.