Capturing Your Stories

Oops...I thought there were updates here since the new year. Guess I've been writing them, and forgetting to post them. Time to get back on track and focused.

For eight years, I’ve been asking people to “write it down.”
That’s not a request to start a “to do” list. It’s the line I’ve used in the Hartland Historical Society’s quarterly newsletter for eight years hoping more people would realize the importance of writing down their memories.
Reading a newspaper, newsletter or magazine, whether daily, weekly or monthly, you are reading the stories of our lives: People doing good, and bad, in the world; interesting jobs, hobbies, habits or stories of overcoming adversity for an individual or a group or conducting business, publicly or privately.
Your daily reading is history or current events…and you probably hated those classes in school, unless you had some of the teachers I did.
News reporters are today’s historians. They record the day’s events so you are better informed about the world around you, and so years down the road you can go back to that report whether in a saved clipping, a scrapbook or in the newspaper archives, whether they are kept electronically or as hard copy. More and more it is electronically, digitally. Either way it’s preserved.
What reporters can’t do is tell the stories you know.
You may have lived through an historic moment, locally or nationally. Maybe you just remember simpler times, when your family grew all their own food, vegetables and meat; when you walked “miles” to school or worked on a farm or in a long-gone factory. If you are one of those people who readily say “today’s kids don’t know how lucky they are,” you may have some stories to tell.
As an avid “local historian,” I revel in the memories I’ve been permitted to share with my readers or simply with the person with the memory.
The fact that you are reading this column says you may be of a special generation…one that still reads.
We are constantly bombarded with an opinion younger generations are not interested in the printed word…but hard copy, newsprint, or digital, people will continue to read…how else will they learn about the world around them? And better still, how will they learn about the people who came before them?
Writing down your memories is your contribution to education, to history, and to improvement for future generations and appreciation for what earlier generations accomplished.
If you have “lived” a life time, you have seen the changes for the good that have happened around us, as well as some of the regrettable actions of local residents, governments or businesses. How will later generations know what they’ve missed…if you don’t “write it down”?
As a local historian and a writer, I would love to tell your stories or help you write them yourself.
I am Brenda Seekins, freelance writer, photographer and personal publishing consultant.
Share your thoughts and stories with me at brendaseekins@gmail.com or just support your local reporters and writers and call them.