Liter.Allie

Taken on a different, and even more powerful scale, information has the power to save us. Jennings recalls the tale of 10 year-old Tilly Smith who saved over a 100 tourists from a beach in Thailand moments before the Boxing Day Tsunami of 2004 by deploying one fact from her geography class. This story illustrates the power of one remember fact used at precisely the right place and time.

I threw a fistful of sparkling confetti into the night sky on the eve of 2012 and I lived out an important belief of mine: that all majorly hyped holidays -- or all days for that matter -- are better spent in the company of good friends than in long lines. I tripped and fell down a flight stairs. No, not literally; but that is the physical equivalent of what my emotionally charged February was like, and in fewer words. I went to New York City, Santa Fe, Southampton, and San Diego via coastal Highway 1. I learned a new definition for the expression "new age' and got a couple sunburns. I took hundreds of instagrams and wrote a few poems. I watched many sun sets and ran my first half marathon. I met new friends and welcomed back a lost one into my life. I cried when I was happy and when I was sad. I voted for a leader I believe in and volunteered for literary and literacy causes. I saw my first shooting star.

The Governor's Mansion is perhaps the best example of a structure that tells a story — over a dozen stories, in fact. Built for a wealthy merchant in 1877, the house remained in the family until 1903, when the state purchased it for the use of the California governor. Thirteen governors lived in that home, the last being Ronald Reagan. At the time that Reagan left office in 1967, a new governor’s mansion had been built, but Reagan’s successor, Jerry Brown, refused to live in it, and the state eventually sold it. The mansion's design is a combination of two schools under the umbrella of Victorian architecture: Second Empire (a Gothic-revival style) and Italianate (a neo-classical style). The rather ornate building is a clear nod to the mercantile wealth experienced in the early days of Sacramento’s business sector. While very little has been done to alter the historic building, small signs of its familial heritage are present. For example, in an upstairs bathroom, if you look closely you’ll see that the claw-foot bathtub has painted toenails. Originally built by a Gold Rush merchant in 1855, the Leland Stanford Mansion was purchased by the wealthy railroad tycoon in 1861. Stanford was a member of the "Big Four" — the four principal entrepreneurs behind the Central Pacific Railroad — and went on to become a prominent member of the Republican party, serving as California governor and U.S. senator. His most notable legacy is his eponymous university, the world renowned Stanford University in Palo Alto. A true testament to the exuberant wealth of the railroad boom in post-Gold Rush California, this Renaissance-revival mansion is spectacularly elaborate, and is still used as the formal reception residence for international diplomats and guests of state. Built in 1872 in the Italianate style — an extravagant reference to wealth and prestige — the Crocker Mansion was originally conceived as both a home and an art gallery. Edwin Crocker was a judge on the California Supreme Court and the legal council for the Central Pacific Railroad, where his brother, Charles Crocker, was a "Big Four" member. He had an impressive personal art collection that he wanted to display, so the house was divided into two sections, with the elaborate gallery sitting adjacent to the family home. A civically engaged citizen, Crocker and his wife opened the galleries to the public in 1885, showcasing one of the largest collections of California art that dates back to Gold Rush. Designed by Seth Babson and James Seadler — the same architects who designed the Crocker and Stanford mansions — the Llewellyn Williams Mansion was completed in 1885 and is considered one of the finest examples of Italiante-Stick style architecture in California. "Lew" Williams lived there for only six years before his death, and since then the mansion has passed through several incarnations — as a private club, a restaurant, and even a funeral parlor. The mansion also has the unique distinction of having been picked up and moved across the street in 1994, and then picked up and moved back again in 2001! Today, the Llewellyn Williams Mansion is home to the Sacramento Hostel.

There is an anxious quality to my sharing. The addiction to document my enviable, 20-something life has become less about my desire to seem cool and more of a compulsion to capture reality. As if what I do offline isn’t real unless there is someone to like it on Facebook.

And it's more than just making people jealous, it's more than getting attention or praise or validation. Humans live for each other. We really do. Hatred and apathy run rampant in human civilization. There is always an "other" -- whom we either detest or ignore. But still, it is for that other that we exist. We are not alone; there is someone else there.

And it's fear, I think. It is a fear of the other that motivates a desire to share. It's also a fear that without the other, without someone else, our lives aren't real.

I exist because you see me. I will grow old, Facebook will inevitably evolve, and I will be left with memories trapped inside my mind. But you were there, too. You saw all that I did and I and you and we, existed together.