I love the library. With all apologies to the folks at Kindle™, there’s nothing like a book. I won the library lottery last week. For those of you without small children and/or other impatient people who accompany you to The-Wondrous-Place-Where-You-Can-Get-All-The-Books-You-Want, Library Lotto is the game of chance played by swiping a volume from the shelf with less forethought than that exercised by an amateur shoplifter. I won big when I grabbed Listening is an Act of Love, a collection of interviews from recordings made by the StoryCorps project.

StoryCorps is an independent nonprofit project whose mission is to honor and celebrate one another’s lives through listening.1 Story Corps holds the fundamental belief that everyone has a story. A story that ought to be shared and saved. In addition to giving voice to the story, this project gives the story life – eternal life - as a recording preserved in the national archive.

My grandfather always lamented that his mother’s life story was lost. She was reportedly the black sheep of her family and she never mentioned her past. If her husband, my great-grandfather, knew her story it died with him. None of her 11 children thought to ask. No one knows if she kept a diary. If she did, it’s gone.

Imagine. Just imagine if Lulu had kept a blog. Her thoughts, feelings and opinions; everyday moments of life; a recipe; snippets of her children’s antics washed away by more contemporary thoughts – Ruby lost a tooth, Larry learned to walk, Pete headed West to make his fortune; the upheavals in life that time condensed to milestones - a child lost, another pregnancy, foreclosure, the transgression(s) that cost her everything (or maybe set her free); the little stories that make a life story - her story - would be committed to the permanence of cyberspace.

Blog up, y’all. Your great grandchildren and other people’s great-grandchildren want to know.


1 StoryCorps website, http://storycorps.org.