Kathy’s Corner » Be a Better Ancestor: Lori Olson White & Today’s Stories » May 2026

Many thanks to our spectacular guest, Lori Olson White, our fantastic presenter, Kathy Stone, and our audience, including Linda Teather, Kimberly C., Marian Beaman Kathy Nielsen, and Rhonda Wilhite and all of you following along from this recording.Your precious family artifacts today just might unravel a descendant’s genealogical brick wall. Share what you’ve learned today from Lori and Kathy and spread the word. Your generous ❤️s, restacks, and shares are a wonderful way to share this post with others. These free programs are made possible by the generous support of our Patrons. Learn more, Projectkin.org/about & join us!Time for Our StoriesOn Kathy’s Corner this year, we’ve focused on solutions to the challenges of managing the personal archive we’ve inherited from our ancestors. Today, we turned to consider the ancestor we’ll turn into in twenty, fifty, or a hundred years from today. Kathy’s guest, Lori Olson White is an author, historian, genealogist, and story collector. She’s the author of dozens of books, including the Century Safe Method, and publisher of the Lost and Found Storybox, Culinary History is Family History on Substack. Today, Lori is building on the method she discovered behind Annie Diehm’s Century Safe to create a time capsule for her family. She’s now sharing her journey in a 22-part series, “Building My Bridge to 2076.” (It’s a terrific example of practicing what you preach.) Last month, Lori joined us to talk about this project in a special for Projectkin, which you can view here: It’s the perfect follow-on to our conversations about goal setting, our multi-part celebration of ephemera like postcards, ask-the-archivist with Kate Jacus, and the wonderful conversation we had in March with Jane Chapman about the Postcard Treasure Box her husband had inherited. Getting practicalYou may have heard or read about Lori’s project, today’s conversation took all of that as a starting point to focus on why this all matters so much. Kathy shared with us some practical tips on how to tell our stories, what to tell and some methods of telling them.Lori has graciously crafted a “Day-in-the-Life Journal” to get you started and asked us to share it with you with this recording. These were some of the software to help you tell your own story that Kathy mentioned:* Remento - Voice Recording ofMemories  www.remento.co* Storyworth - Written prompt service welcome.storyworth.com* VoicedMemories – Photos are the prompts my.voicedmemories.caTimeline-building tools:* Timeline Project by Knightlab, a JavaScript tool built by non-profit associated with Northwestern University, developed for journalists: timeline.knightlab.com (see Projectkin.org/stories250-timeline)* Canva Timelines  canva.com/templates/s/timelineShort simple questions: * A day in the life* The day I was responsible for… Forms of storytelling* Scrapbooks: Stories from the day they were born* Gifts from an ancestor: tell the story of the object from within the family * Quilts that can stories in any form* Collections of special documents (union cards, W2 forms, all kinds of things), yearbooks it’s not the object, it’s why the object is important… Even antique goblets. Here’s a reference to those goblets she’s mentioned.)Have some more ideas? Drop them in the comments and you just might inspire someone else.About KathyWith her decades of experience as a professional photo organizer, Kathy always has another special insight to get us through it. Learn more about Kathy’s Coaching.As Projectkin, we’re here to help families tell their stories in any form. I feel strongly that our collections of photos and other artifacts are key to our memories and, in turn, our stories.If you think this post might interest a friend or colleague, why not just pass it along?These are public posts, and our events are free because sharing your stories is that important. Let’s get this started!See all coming events in our calendar at Projectkin.org/events. Get full access to Projectkin at projectkin.substack.com/subscribe