The World Wide Panorama

Introduction

Pat Swovelin, who has contributed to the WWP for years and served as editor and maintainer for the events of the WWP, passed away on May 21st, 2012, two days after he sent this essay for the Heritage event out to the mailing lists. The June 2012 WWP event is dedicated to him.

-- The WWP team

The June 2012 event on the theme of “Heritage” has 84 panoramas. Photography was done between June 15 and 24, and the long-term events “Culture” and “Forests” were open for new contributions at the same time.

Theme Essay: Heritage

The essay conveys the team’s idea of the event. It is usually published together with the Theme announcement and offers a starting point for the contributing photographers.

Heritage

by Pat Swovelin

Heritage is a very wide term that gives you lots of ways to interpret it based on your country, culture and life experiences. Heritage is the things passed on from your parents that make you who and what you are today and will be passed on to your children in turn. It’s what shaped the basis of your country and your culture. It can be the history of a company, group or organization. It’s why things are the way they are because of what has been carried over from one generation to the next. Heritage is the living history that’s all around us. It’s what we see and do everyday that we don’t give a second thought to yet, despite that, will become the heritage of the future that’s yet to be.

Heritage, noun:

1. something that comes or belongs to one by reason of birth; an inherited lot or portion: a heritage of poverty and suffering; a national heritage of honor, pride, and courage.
2. something reserved for one: the heritage of the righteous.
3. Law.
   1. something that has been or may be inherited by legal descent or succession.
   2. any property, especially land, that devolves by right of inheritance.

Heritage refers to something inherited from the past. The word has several different senses, including:

• Natural heritage, an inheritance of fauna and flora, geology, landscape and landforms, and other natural resources
• Cultural heritage, the legacy of physical artifacts and intangible attributes of a group or society: man-made heritage
• Food heritage
• Industrial heritage, monuments from industrial culture
• Tradition, customs and practices inherited from ancestors
• Virtual Heritage, an ICT work dealing with cultural heritage
• Inheritance of physical goods after the death of an individual; of the physical or non-physical things inherited
• Heredity, biological inheritance of physical characteristics
• Birthright, something inherited due to the place, time, or circumstances of someone’s birth
• Kinship, the relationship between entities that share a genealogical origin

This is a great theme and I’m excited to see what everyone has in their past (yes, even skeletons in the closet if you’re willing to show them). Show the world what you’ve got and where you came from. Show us your heritage!