Do you remember?

a short one today it's Monday had a long day so I'm delivering this very late hi I'm Michael Gross and this well this is the Daily Grateful and what am I grateful for today I'm grateful for remembering what does that mean I don't want to go back to this but I will at my brother's service it was outside it was a complete military funeral I mean just incredible and my daughter is there with me oh a bunch of my kids were there with me but my daughter was next to me and she said we should be recording this in other words pull out the iPhone and record it and I said no she said you don't want a record of this I said no I want a memory of this sometimes memories are better than recordings now where does this all go back to it goes back to a bunch of different things that happened in my life in 1971 I think 1971-72 I went to a play at Florida State University called The Crucible it was a very deep intense play with a lot of very good acting and what is this this is 50 some years since I saw that play but I have all these memories of the play I went to another play in the same theater and I went to another play in the same theater about a year later it was Dracula my friend John Palmer Clerich played Professor Van Helsing in it and I watched and you know what I have I don't have a recording of it I have a distinct memory of it I have a distinct memory of how one of the characters was taunting Professor Van Helsing and just the way it went and the lighting was so good all of these are memories that you have from going to a play this is why plays are so cool because the memories that you have of plays stay with you and sometimes they change sometimes they develop a little bit more sometimes parts of it go away but other times parts of it enlarge it's rather incredible I did radio for 35 years and it was live I walked into the studio every Saturday sat my butt down and Mr. Microphone turned on and I spent a couple hours talking answering gardening questions well sometimes I answered gardening questions sometimes I just talked about the people that called asking questions about their life and why did they want to plant roses or why did they want to plant a tall shrub on the side of their house when perhaps letting more sunlight in this is what I did there's no recordings it just happened and believe it or not I go into trade publications or I go into Facebook groups about radio and there are people who still remember my radio show who are constantly not constantly but on occasion they talk about different parts of my show and they talk about callers and they talk about all kinds of things and these things just keep coming up no tapes just from memory like the time I sent my producer Scotty on a remote to the Redwood Forest in Northern California with a chainsaw to thin the place a little bit and you could hear the chainsaw of course that was all an act but the memories of that that people have that I still hear about today because I told everybody after it was all done that it was an act that Scotty was actually on the other side of the double bulletproof glass and he's the one who had been answering the calls when people were calling up to complain about Scotty being in the Redwood Forest but to this day there are still people out there because I read about it on Facebook in these radio places and where they're talking about Scotty with a chainsaw in the Redwood Forest never happened but it's a good memory it's a great memory and I want people to embrace those things so do we need to record every little thing that goes on no now that we all have smartphones there's a lot of that going on and right now what am I doing I'm doing a podcast guess what it's a record it's recorded you can come back and listen to it anytime you want this is totally new for me I'm used to sitting down and talking and it goes out there and it's out there to the world but now with the technology that we have today and people aren't listening to radio that much anymore they're listening to these things you can come back and listen anytime you want you can come back five years from now and listen so that's interesting but I bet you won't I bet you're going to remember what I talked about so be grateful for memories be absolutely you know not everything has to be recorded it doesn't sometimes we can just experience something and that can be part of our life and that will be part of our memories and those will be things that we tell our children and our children will tell their children and that's good that's good be grateful for memories we'll see you tomorrow