This Older Bloggers’ listing breaks my rule requiring an entry to be posted at least once a week, but I like the idea so much that we’ll ignore that rule this time.

The title, Backward Rain, says Ron Horne who is recently retired, describes what he did for a living – irrigation contracting. What is so powerfully engaging about his Weblog is that he posts, side-by-side with his current entry, a backward look - an entry from his teen diaries written during the mid-1960s.

From 6 June 1968:

“On Wednesday Robert Kennedy was shot and killed in Los Angelis…I stayed up all Tuesday night and morning watching TV and before he died I even went to church to say a prayer. I seem to be the only one at school who has been effected in any way. Most people seem unconcerned…”

On the same page, in his most recent entry about his current life wherein home is a 40-acre piece of land east of San Diego, Ron tells us about the effort to install new water storage tanks in what appears from his photo to be a wild, lonely space that is cougar country, though he hasn’t spotted one of the big cats yet:

“I gotta admit that lately, when I go for my morning walk, I start to wonder if I'm really alone. On our backpacking trip Catherine got into a tug-of-war with a bear over a sack of food. I had to use pepper spray to drive the thing off…”

"A tug of war with a bear?" That is a bit too much up-close-and-personal-with-nature for this urban lady who senses that the life of Ron and his wife Catherine is a tad more dangerous, particularly on an elemental level, than hers.

On 25 October 2003, Ron and Catherine had to evacuate their land racing against the encroachment of raging brush fires that came within three feet of destroying their home. It did take their outbuildings, and they have been repairing essential services since then. As dramatic as the story is, Ron didn't get around to describing the near-disaster on his Weblog until three months after the event.

He says writing is difficult for him and the words come slowly.

“One of my teachers in college would return my papers with criticism about awkward sentence structure. She really hammered the point home though my writing is still awkward and self conscious (and slow).”

He is working, less frequently than weekly but not so infrequently, to overcome his reluctance to write because, he says, “I want to remember myself.” Such a lovely phrase and I wonder if that is not what many of us are up to with our Weblogs.

Reading Ron's Sixties entries reminds me of my own teen self, and I believe the pairing of Ron’s 35-year-old “analog Weblog” with today’s digital version in some magical way helps his readers remember themselves as much as it does so for Ron Horne. It is worth your time to stop by Backward Rain.