What Remains

History is written by the victors

A huge Thank You to Stone Bryson and Duane Toops for reading and edititing this essay, and to Duane Toops for the beautiful collages

Not for the first time, I’ve been inspired by what other authors wrote. 
Demi Pietchell, The Starfire Codes, had another Meme drop in which old buildings featured, and Charlotte Pendragon made several references to the first fairgrounds in her articles. 

What ties them together is history, or rather the way we treat history. The way we remember. The way we forget. What we build. What remains.
Demi Pietchell remarked in a discussion with Stone Bryson that it was heartbreaking to see so many old buildings falling into disrepair or ruin, and ultimately being torn down. 
Buildings that had been constructed with no more than hammers and chisels, ingenious constructions of ladders, ropes and pulleys, using dovetail joints and often wooden pegs to get solid joints. Medieval churches are an excellent example. 
Many had stood the test of time only to be discarded as ‘old’ or no longer up to date. 

Charlotte Pendragon gave a wonderful insight into those first fairgrounds and the way they had been built. Here, too, people had been working with shovels and ladders, transporting equipment and wood by horse and buggy while hammering and constructing the wonders of those days. 
Sadly, these, too, fell into disrepair and were torn down to make way for more modern entertainment parks. 

At the same time, scientists marvel at the qualities of Roman cement. Cement that could repair itself by the addition of quicklime to the process. The Romans had apartment blocks, domes of non-fortified concrete that 2,000 years later are still intact. We marvel at their buildings, their ingenuity and their architectural qualities. We go on trips to visit famous sites, like the Acropolis in Athens (Greece), Stonehenge (UK), the Mayan cities, etc etc. We take pictures, make videos and write about our visits in blogs. 

Of course, the great Cathedrals are still there, they’ve been restored countless times. Many people were shocked when the famous ‘Notre Dame’ church in Paris was seen with its roof engulfed in flames. Ancient beams that had held the roof for many hundreds of years fell down, charred and smouldering, the stained-glass of its characteristic rosette window shattered. A rescue was set up, a rescue fund as well. Because…well, it’s the ‘Notre Dame’. 
But what about the not so famous buildings in towns and villages? When it comes to our own history, we tend to disregard the old buildings, so full of details, of stories, of awe, so full of ‘soul’, their own and that of the people who once were living, worshipping or working there, because they’re old, no longer useful, their design old-fashioned. 

They are only too often not considered worth saving or restoring. The town council doesn’t have the money required, less and less people are going to church, and the location could be used for other purposes. 
And in the place of that characteristic building comes some sort of concrete monstrum. 

The saying is that history is written by the victors, the winners take it all. Historic records are written by those who won. The same could be said of our cityscapes, our skylines. The places that we’ve lived and loved and had our being. 

The stories of the people who opposed what was happening are largely forgotten. What will history make of us? Who will write the memory of what we’ve made? Between the remnants and remembrance, what are we leaving behind that will survive beyond our days, and who will have the final say?