A couple years ago, I sent my great grand aunt a recorder with a list of questions. I wanted her to speak into the microphone and tell me more about her own personal history as well as that of my mother. Everyone now and then, I go back and listen to the tape. Granted it’s quite emotional at times, but it’s good to hear about their personal histories.
I’m thinking about all this as while taking a break from work yesterday afternoon, I happen to turn on the TV (which I almost never do during the day) and caught one of the premiere episodes of The Jane Pauley Show. Show focused on the fact that all of us have a story and we should document in video/sound for ourselves as well as future generations.
One organization that she mentioned that is helping people do this is called: StoryCorps.

StoryCorps is a national initiative to instruct and inspire Americans to record one another’s stories in sound. The project is the brainchild of MacArthur Fellow Dave Isay and his award-winning documentary company, Sound Portraits Productions (SPP). It is one of the largest documentary oral history projects ever donated to the Library of Congress, and it will be one of the first “born-digital” collections to come to the American Folklife Center.

Isn’t that cool? I think so. As such, the next time I’m in New York (hopefully with Racquetball Guy); I’ll like to sign up for a session at their soundproof booth in Grand Central Station. Of course, I could always just go ahead and do it at home — so perhaps I’ll target that as a project for us to work on after we celebrate our 6 month anniversary. Speaking of anniversaries, today is actually our 5 month anniversary. Yeah for me!! Yeah for us!!
In any event, I thought this was such a good idea, that I couldn’t help but share. Reading about my family history through letters and diaries is great — but there is nothing like hearing the voices behind those words.