Thank you Kyla Bayang, Marian Beaman, Danine, Laurie MacIntosh, Jim the Historian, Linda Teather, Traveling Close to Home, Lori Olson White, Jason Stephenson, Jill Swenson, Gwendolyn Copeland, Dr. Mary M. Marshall, Lisa Rex and so many more of you for joining Kathy Stone and me today. I can’t tell you how much it means to us to see you join us from around the continent. Thank you for your added ❤️s to help others see this conversation, too. Thank you. Did I miss you? Add your thoughts in the comments below.
This Week Kathy Looks Back to the Future
Our conversation today gave us a preview of Thursday’s special program with Kathy’s guest, Lori Olson White of The Lost and Found Story Box, to talk about preserving today's stories and being a better ancestor. This is a perfect fit for her new series, “Building My Bridge to 2076,” which shares how she is implementing a new approach, the Century Safe Method, which Lori developed while researching Annie Diehm, a Civil War widow who sealed a safe containing stories at the American Centennial.
Remember, Thursday’s program is held via Zoom, so you will need to register for your personal link.
Because this is a “Preview” series on Sundays, we get to wander into other related… and not so related topics. As my cat Zarabeth swished her way back and forth, we hit on a few topics I wanted to provide references to:
Historical events & our personal memories:
This is a topic that comes up frequently in conversations among family historians. Events like the end of the Vietnam War in 1975 conjure strong memories for many Americans. Recalling where they were at the time brings up a great deal of context about their lives leading up to that moment that aren’t captured in textbooks. This conversation today was in response to Denyse Allen’s moving post, “Your Bicentennial Memories Are Here: The Ones Who Didn’t Come Home,” in the context of tomorrow’s Memorial Day here in the US.
Technologies & storage devices
As human beings, we’re “wet ware” in the sense that we are made of flesh and blood. Our input media are simple eyes and brains. The devices we use to store our stories for future generations need to anticipate mediation to reach their intended audience. Does that mean, as Jill Swenson asked, that media like USB drives are a bad idea? Well, yes, and no. Yes, because you can’t count on any input format we use today (floppy disk, diskette, CD, DVD, or USB) to be used or even accessible 50 years from now. The same goes for file formats (WordPerfect, anyone?) Factors include
Physical media (electronic, parchment, ordinary paper, ink, magnetic media, analog media like celluloid film, glass negatives).
Applications, file formats, even .doc, .xls, or .pdf1
Writing styles, languages, and more.
Then there’s the larger topic of what future generations might be interested in.
Historical topics (e.g. Vietnam War)
Cultural topics (what we wore, what they thought, believed, and did)
News topics (current news events)
There are so many ways to spin this and get motivated to start being a better ancestor.
Is this the kind of post you think your friends and followers might appreciate as well? Kindly add a recommendation so they know how you feel. You’ll be doing us the favor of spreading our work.
Thank you.
I truly wish I could be there on Thursday to join in on the fun. As I shared in the program, I’ll have to catch up by watching the recording. You’ll find them at Kathy’s Corner: Projectkin.org/kathys-corner.
About Kathy Stone
Kathy has been the “cornerstone” of Projectkin since we were a “Rōnin” gang called “PostPonga.” That was just over three years ago, just after RootsTech 2023. Her commitment to the physical artifacts of family history now inspires our whole community. Learn more about what Kathy is doing today at her own publication:
As Projectkin, we’re here to help families tell their stories in any form. I feel strongly that our collections of photos and other artifacts are key to our memories and, in turn, our stories.
Do you have friends or family members who may benefit from this? Please share our work and invite friends and family to join us:
In our conversation, Kathy mentioned the .max file. A photo manager colleague of hers commented, “This was a file format once used by the Paperport scanner from Visioneer. They made a viewer that should be downloadable. If it is this format, which was meant to be similar to a PDF to hold multiple pages in a single file, getting the images out may not be simple.”
Here is a link to the website for this product visioneer-paperport-viewer.software.informer.com/3.0.
Wikipedia has a nifty list of file formats that references sources in further links: Wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_file_formats
