So, my sister was digging through the archives and discovered that our 6th great grandfather, Evan Watkins, built and owned Watkins Ferry which crosses the Potomac River where it divides Maryland and West Virginia (which I did not even know were adjacent). We have been up and down the east coast with family stuff, and yesterday we decided to detour over and take a look.

There’s no ferry any more obviously – there is a bridge which crosses from Williamsport, MD, into West Virginia. On the (now) West Virginia side, there’s an historical marker, which you can see in the photo, as well as what’s left of the house, known as Maidstone-on-the-Potomac.

It was raining pretty hard, and so after a few quick pictures we sat in the car at the side of the road looking around. I was startled out of my reverie by someone tapping on my window. It was a local woman who stopped to see if we needed any help – a reasonable guess, why else would anyone be sitting here?!). And isn’t it nice to know there are people like that still around! I explained why we were there, and she said “oh my goodness, I can’t believe it!” and launched into short speech, she was really into the history of the area and really seemed impressed that we had come.

I felt briefly and absurdly famous.

It got me thinking about what lasts. In philosophical approach I’m a Stoic – “memento mori“, Marcus Aurelius, and all that. So, I do think about death, and recent events have me thinking about it more. What will people remember about me? about you? If you have a family, you live on through your family, and they remember. But that usually only lasts a few generations. I remember my grandfather, but I expect nobody alive remembers much of my great grandfather. That Ferry, well, people remember. It was there. It’s marked. It’s a piece of history.

I write software. I look at it as a creative act, not unlike writing a novel. But software is ephemeral. Rarely does a piece of software matter for more than, say, a decade. The writer James Salter (whose work I admire very much) said:

There comes a time when you realize that everything is a dream, and only those things preserved in writing have any possibility of being real.

James Salter, Don’t Save Anything.

I suppose I need to get started on that book that’s been running around in my head.