The Archivist in a House That Leaks

By Cliff Potts, CSO, and Editor-in-Chief of WPS News

Baybay City, Leyte, Philippines — June 7, 2026, 10:05 a.m.

There is a certain absurdity in trying to build a long-term archive while living in a place that keeps reminding you how temporary everything is. Roofs need patching. Shelves collapse. Water comes when it comes. Heat, dust, rust, insects, and gravity all have their say. Nothing around me suggests permanence. Nothing in the structure itself says, “This is built to last.” And yet that is exactly what I am trying to do with the work.

That tension matters. I do not live in a scholar’s study or a comfortable office with climate control and neat file drawers. I live in a place where maintenance is constant and stability is negotiated one repair at a time. So the archive is not emerging from ideal conditions. It is emerging in defiance of them. That may be the most honest part of it. I am not writing from shelter. I am writing from exposure. The record is being built inside the very kind of uncertainty it is trying to preserve.

For more from Cliff Potts, see https://cliffpotts.org

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