The Purpose of these Artifacts
About a month after the hurricane's initial impact, I drove into Panama City to bring suppies to family members and observe the damages from the storm. Even after a month of repair, the city was still in shambles. What was once a quiet yet vibrant town of palm and trees beach-goers was now a desolate landscape cluttered with debris and fallen power lines. Old tourist attractions I used to visit in my childhood were reduced to rubble. Schools were officially shut down and turned into shelters for the homeless. A mandatory curfew was enacted by police, preventing anyone from entering or leaving the city after 7:00pm. The inhabitants of Panama City were suffering.
This exhibit was created in order to showcase the everyday writing found after the impact of Hurricane Michael. Everyday writing is often immediate, and these artifact reflect everyday writing in a situation calling for fast communication and timely writing. The artifacts in this exhibit are meant to quickly convey very specific messages and feelings. For this reason, they do not have much linguistic text. The artifacts in this exhibit follow two central themes: the theme of protection from danger and the theme of rebuilding. Both of these themes were felt heavily throughout my stay in Panama City.
The presence of these artifacts shows thast there is more to everyday writing than what is in our daily routines. Even when the more conventional methods of writing are not available, everyday writing is still used to address the needs of people. Everyday writing is immediate and flexible to the situation at hand. No matter the state of a community, everyfday writing will always be used as a tool to build that community to a further purpose.