CLIP OR SNIP?

On a table in my office sits an East Anchorage High School yearbook dated 1972. Why I never put it back in the safe after looking someone up I’ll never know. Laziness has definitely crept in this past year.

Within the first few pages, is a yellowed, “Anchorage Times,” newspaper clipping about the death of a friend of mine, Michael Kelly. Michael Boyd “Mike” Kelly died on August 20, 1972, while goldmining with friends in Hope, Alaska. I was there with a pal when it happened, but didn’t know what the ambulance and state trooper cars were on scene for. Mike Kelly had graduated two months earlier like me.

That clipping will always remain in the yearbook, until that time when I’m no longer around. What’ll happen to it after that lies in my children and grandchildren’s hands. So many yearbooks end up on eBay, and quite sadly, I’ve already witnessed several from my graduating class.

I came across a small newspaper article that Mom snipped, with it being an article from 1950 when she was badly burned in a fire. I supposed this is one memory Mom would’ve just as soon forgot, yet thankfully, kept it so that her grandchildren and great grandchildren would know of the tragedy.

My mother kept a lot of clippings going way back to the 1940s. Some consisted of birth announcements, death announcements, and unusual stuff like, “so and so visited so and so over the weekend.” Small town newspapers back in the day would print just about anything.

I found our names on some clippings, saying that we’d driven over from Selma, Alabama, and visited our grandparents in Vernon for the weekend. I believe Grandma Hankins gave the “Lamar Democrat” this personal information to share.

With newspapers going digital more and more, and hardcopy papers becoming a thing of the past, the days of clipping articles is also coming to a halt. In another 20 years, no longer will families go through their departed loved-ones mementoes, finding clippings like I did, or even photos for that matter.

Hardcopy photos are also becoming extinct. I don’t see this as a good because family history will be lost for future generations. There’s something to be done here to make sure that doesn’t happen in both articles and photographs.

Several years ago, my son showed me how to clip pictures and articles from online newspapers and magazines. I’ve done my share since then, even snipping some that warned against doing such. I look at these warnings as nothing more than those tags or labels they used to put on mattresses, cautioning not to remove them. Only my generation will remember these.

Printing off the snipped digital articles on our copier, I’ve placed the more significant ones in a safe. That’s where I keep the older family memorabilia as well.

Some will say this about snipping digitized online articles, over that of clipping the real thing. They’ll never turn yellow or fade with time. Premium grade copy paper is not supposed to do such. To me though, yellow is an honorable patina, dictating that the article itself was worthy of keeping. I’d much rather use real scissors and clip the real thing, over that of snipping a digitized image!