Loss of records through technology

It's very sad that in today's world we are losing our record-keeping abilities to technology. People rarely write letters by "snail-mail" when we can e-mail something within seconds. When the e-mail reaches the intended recipient, he or she reads it and discards it. It is lost for good. Our grandchildren won't be able to see who our friends were and what we liked to talk about with them. They won't have hand-written love letters from one grandparent in the war to his wife at home like some of us do. They might know our names, our birthdate/deathdate or perhaps the day we were christened or baptized--since churches seem to keep good records of such events--but they will have no idea who we are and what our lives are like. Letter-writing and Journaling are a valuable, but diminishing art. Journaling with a real pen and paper is a wonderful way to preserve ourselves and our personalities. I wish I had a journal of some of my ancestors. I wish i knew of their lives from them, rather than from history books. It would be so much more interesting. Our lives seem average and dull to us, as I'm sure their lives seemed to them. If we keep journals for future generations, we will be doing the world a service that takes about 10 minutes of our time out of each day or even out of each week. Give this gift to your (future) grandchildren. Even if you are already a grandparent and think it would be pointless to start a journal at your age, it isn't. Every Sunday I try to sit down with my grandparents, set a timer, and make them write in their journals for 10-20 minutes. They complain about the amount of time I make them write or anything else they can think of. They complain that they don't have anything interesting to write about. To this I suggest something like "write about your first day of school" or "write about the first time you broke a bone". "Do you ever remember your parents being very angry with you?" I get all sorts of interesting stories from those, but they decide to tell me verbally rather than permanently record them with ink and paper. I have to be firm with them, but it is worth it. I love the stories I get. I especially like the one about my grandmother hiding a litter of baby mice to keep as pets. When the mice escaped and nested in her mother's clothing, she was caught and in lots of trouble. Write down your stories and encourage your loved ones, both young and old, to do the same. People will be grateful for the effort.