Somewhere I have a casette tape with a recording made on Christmas morning many years ago. The tape has the voice of my sister Lori, and our mom and dad. If memory serves, we’re not doing much of anything except opening gifts and enjoying our morning. I can almost hear Lori asking “Did you get everything you wanted for Christmas, Linda?”
The problem is that while I have this treasure I have nothing to play it on; the voices of my sister and parents have been preserved in a manner that I can’t access. One day, I plan to investigate just how I can get the recording off of the tape and into the digital realm.
As I was thinking about this little Christmas morning vignette, I realized how fortunate we are to be living in this time where technology has advanced so much. Sitting here in my little home office I have the ability to create an audio recording of one of my stories, in fact I tested that technology out yesterday and it works very well. I can also, with just my laptop computer, create a video recording of myself reading one of my stories. I tested that out yesterday as well.
The inspiration for my exploration of technology came from an interview Matilda Butler did with author Susan Tweit over at Womens Memoirs. If you have any interest in exploring this medium I encourage you to listen to Susan discuss how she created an audio CD of her own stories.
Consider, for a moment, if you had the ability to listen to your great-grandmother’s voice, or to watch a video recording of her read a story or poem she had written. What a treasure that would be! We, right here and right now, have the ability to create such a gift for our own descendents! Just imagine!
If you’re not a writer and have no stories to share consider preserving your thoughts about what a typical day in your life is like. I am sure that your great-great-grandchildren would be fascinated to hear what life was like in 2010.
Of course we have no way of knowing what technological changes will take place in the future, but I think that by the fact that the audio and video recordings we create today are in a digital format, there is a very good chance that they will be able to be accessed in some format in the years to come.
It is an exciting thing to consider; not only can we preserve our stories by writing them down, we now we have the ability to share them them verbally and visually as well!
Have you considered using any of these things to preserve your own life writing?
Such an interesting idea! My mom does geneology and has made a dozen or so scrapbooks with info (pictures, letters, ship documents, doctor notes, etc) which is so priceless. But I’d never thought of how cool it would be to have a voice attached to those memories.
I hate the sound of my own voice, so I’d have to get over that. But what a great concept!
My brothers and I made a recording of several fairy tales for our niece and nephew several Christmases ago. It’s great fun to listen to now. I have not considered more recordings, mostly because I write everything, but it would mean the world to hear voices of relatives I never had the chance to know. Great food for thought here.
I bought one of those hallmark books where you read and record your voice and I sent it to my granddaughter 😀
We got one for each of our grandchildren this year too. Such a great idea!
Your new website is lovely. The name is perfect, too.
Thank you, Beth. I’m glad you found me over here and hope you visit often.