Here is a list of all the subjects and objects of this silva rerum archive of the Robison family. The objects are the people written about. The subjects are the people doing the writing. If you are no longer living, you may appear here only as an object (and if that’s you, I’m sorry to hear that; my condolences). In that case, it’s possible you made no contributions yourself. No worries, we did some for you.

But if you are still in the land of the living, then you can author your own contribution — tell your own story, express your own perspective — and you must do so if you want to appear on this list. You’ll be both a subject and an object. That’s what a silva rerum is.

So click on any name below and you will be taken to one of the blog posts about this person. You can then either search in the side-bar for all posts mentioning this person, or just follow the thread of links from one post to another.

I have organized this archive in terms of households and the biographies of individuals. These are categories you can search.

A household is a group of related individuals living under the same roof, eating together, sharing assets, and caring for one another.  The household is where you can safely leave your stuff; it’s where you can drop by unannounced and get something to eat and where you can, and usually do, sleep. The household is where you started out in life, and if had kids, it’s where you raised them. It’s what determines what language you speak and what part of the country (or world) you live in, at least until you more or less become an adult and form your own household. The physical, material, and geographic aspects of the household therefore matter. Households have their own culture, economy and distinct reality. The cast of characters at the household level (or sometimes among a small set of related households) is what people usually mean when they say “family.”

Everyone also has their own personal story — their individual biography — that contributes to the story of the household of which they are a member. You can only really understand the culture of a household when you know something about the individuals who make it up, their strengths and foibles, their occupation and interests, their education and passions, their habits and quirks, the tragedies and triumphs of their lives. Individuals also transcend households. We each have a life independent of our household, often predating (or postdating) our membership. Everyone comes from one (or more) households in the their childhood and goes on to form one (or more) households as they move through life. Of course, for those who write nothing about themselves and whose lives we are forced to reconstruct, we may not know enough to write a biographical statement of any interesting detail. These individuals may largely or only appear as characters in the households of which they were a part.