"This is the story of Nancy MacIntyre, a Tale of the Prairies.

My connection to this book began in 1912, when a soldier named Felix picked up a used copy on his way to enlist in the army. He carried Nancy with him while fighting in WW1, and he became known for gathering fellow soldiers together around the campfire and reading the book aloud. When he returned to the US, he continued this tradition with friends and family, but as Nancy's popularity grew finding new copies got harder and harder. So Felix financed a special edition, and spent the rest of his life carefully choosing friends and family worthy of their own personalized copy.

Each book included a history of the Nancy's travels, Felix's connection with her, and the following instructions: "You are to read this book ALOUD to yourself and your family. Then you are to read it ALOUD to a few carefully chosen friends on certain occasions when the time is appropriate. Thus, you will repay your debt to an important era in American civilization. With all good wishes, Felix Harris."

Jump forward to 1999 -- half a century after my great grandfather settled and published his book -- I began my own generation's version of reading around the campfire:

I started a blog. It was called The OnGoing Effort, and I started it at the request of my grandfather, who wanted to know what I was up to in college. Over the last eight years, it became a place for everyone to know what I am up to, and it has become an important archive of both the trivial and monumental events of my life over that time.

If you look at these objects independently, they aren't anything special. Its not like Nancy MacIntyre is a great work of fiction. But this little book, and the tradition of reading it aloud, brought people together in a time of great turbulence, and gave them a connection to their culture and their homes that no form of technology of that time could give them. The OnGoing Effort, too, will never win any journalistic awards. But it has been a place that, in equally turbulent times, has connected me to friends and family all over the world through writing and pictures.

But if you put them together they form a sort of technological spectrum - from highly analog to highly digital. And this spectrum became the genesis of my thesis topic: what is the nature of place if both a 50-year old book and a 10-year old blog could both evoke a sense of it?