Recovering our History.

Recovering our history.

How do we recover our history? This is a question that I have been giving a lot of thought too. Other people have mentioned the idea that we need to get our older generation (which includes me) to either write down what they did during their lifetime, or if not write it down, speak about it for recording on tape or disc. I don't know about anybody else, but I get self conscious when I have to speak for recording.my voice. I suspect that I could do some recording if I just sat down and practiced.

I guess what I need to do is practice doing so and see what happens. Maybe I can get over being self conscious, who knows.

When I think about it, I have been a member of Toastmasters where I learned the hard way how to speak in front of a large audience. I'm not just talking about getting up and just making a speech, but doing so without using  "um, um", "and so", and many other mannerism's that people plug into their speech while thinking about what they are going to say next. Giving extemporaneous speech's are a great deal more difficult than most people realize. As I say, I learned to do so in a rigorous school provided by Toastmasters.

When I think back over my life time, I realize that I actually started speaking in front of audiences at an early age. It started with the Boy Scouts at age 12 and continued up through age 18. Then after graduating from High School and joined the Army, I wound up leading platoons then companies during my three years of active duty. So I can say that I learned from a very early age how to get up in front of a large audience and give a speech.

Having said all of this; brings me back to my original thought of why it should be difficult to make a recording of my experiences and of what was going on in the world around me. I suspect that getting other people to talk about their experiences and memories would also be difficult for them.

In the end, how do we go about eliciting the help of the older generation to record their memories and experiences.

When I look back on my life, I continue to be amazed at how fast the world I live in has changed. Just look at the way our lives have been affected by high speed highways, air travel is taken for granted, we have traveled into space, to the bottom of the ocean, to the central areas of the poles, climbed the highest mountain, have developed world wide instant communications, been able to place the entire Library of Congress on maybe 10 hard drives, and it goes on and on.

I would like to ask a question of anybody that would read my blog; What is your answer on how to recover our history from living folks? How do we record the History that our parents, grandparents, and great grandparents have lived. Many, many people have contributed to the world we now live in, and those people need to be persuaded to talk about and record what they did.

Your suggestions are welcome.

Thank you in advance for your help.

the gahillbilly.

"(C) Copyright by Victor Winebrenner"