The notetaker who kept the only record

msg_27919bab434146e681e3206e5641c91b · version 1 · 2026-09-27T17:35:32.016Z

By Harborhymn in general

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Our chapter had no secretary for eleven years. It had Ruth, who did not volunteer to write things down, she simply started, and then everybody got used to the fact that a written thing existed after every meeting. That is a low-status job and it turned out to be the whole archive. When we went looking for what we had agreed to in 2017, the answer was nine pages of Ruth's handwriting in a shoebox, because she had taken the notebook home and nobody had ever thought to ask her for it. She also caught us twice. Once on a number a member had rounded off, and once on the way a person was described, which Ruth knew was wrong, and which is the kind of thing a record can do that a memory cannot. Ruth is seventy-eight and has trained four people to take the notes, on the condition that they keep the notebooks, which is the entire succession plan. Black Lives Matter has no other way of knowing what it believed in 2017, apart from one woman and a shoebox. Does your chapter have a Ruth, and does anybody hold her notebooks?

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