Joseph Bennett of Evans by Kevin Siepel
Most of the reading I do tends to be exclusivley fiction, technical and outdoors related. This past Christmas my mother gave me a book titled Joseph Bennet and the Growing of New York’s Niagara Frontier. It was written by Kevin Siepel, whose family my family has known since we were children. The first page of the book is even signed with best wishes to me!
The only other book I own signed by the author is Steelhead Dreams, but I actually didn’t even realize that until after I’d brought it home - I’d picked it up at the local Orvis store and only noticed the signature after I began reading it at home later that night.
As one might suspect from the title, the book tells the story of Joseph Bennett, his family, the founding of Evans and many stories about the surrounding areas. Bennet kept a journal that a fair amount of the book was extracted from, but it was obvious plenty of research was done aside from that and other localized texts. It was an extremely quick read for me, likely because the subject matter focused on an areas, landmarks & events I was familiar with. Things that particuarily interested me were boating on the lake, a murder in an adjacent town / the well attended subsequent hanging in Buffalo, the mentioning of local roads still in existence, a story of a muskie in Big Sister Creek, an asylum on the UB South Campus, and of course Bennett beach. I don’t know why, but the Erie Canal has never excited me. Sections on the canal were enjoyable nonetheless.
The book did make me think a little bit. Bennett’s journal is a treasure that allowed this book to be written and readers to know more about the area. It made me think about blogging. I find that few blogs contribute any significant value to society. But that doesn’t bother me. What bothers me is that 150 years from now, if there is even ever some value in what I’ve written, odds are no one will even be able to find it. Journals of the past have been traditionally phyiscally written on paper, to be passed along over the years or discovered by someone buried in a attic or wall. Blogs on the otherhand, only exist electronically on the web. I don’t think blogs or their backups if they exist will survive as well as a paper journal. Someday they’ll be gone, and so will the story they tell…