Some six or seven years ago I caught a few episodes of the old I’ve Got a Secret shows from 1950s and 60s. One episode in-particular has stuck with me, it had Samuel J. Seymour on as a guest. His was a rather unique secret, he was at Ford’s Theatre when Abraham Lincoln was assassinated.
Even though this episode was well before I was born (by some 17 years), it was amazing that someone was still around in 1956 who was there when Lincoln was shot. Then the incredible luck that he was recorded on I’ve Got a Secret. Beyond that the recording was preserved at least long enough for me to watch it more than four decades later on the Game Show Network. I haven’t been able to find this online any where unfortunately.
All of this makes me wonder if we are doing enough to preserve the experiences of our elders. For that matter I need to be better about writing in my journal, or video taping messages so that my kids/grand kids/etc. My blog doesn’t really count for this, in another few decades no one will care what day Yahoo bought Flickr, that the maximum row size of SQL Server 2000 is 8060 bytes or how to use CSS opacity in Internet Explorer.