Projectkin Live: The View from Kathy's Corner

Thank you Kyla Bayang, Jane Chapman, Jennifer Jones, Bethalee Klopfleisch, Dr. Mary M. Marshall, Bill Moore, Paula Collins, Ann Larkham, Alan H Zeller, Naomi Yaeger, Lynda Heines, Tom Hendricks, and, of course, also from Calgary, Linda Teather and so many more… It was lovely to share this afternoon with all of you.Your generous ❤️s, restacks, and shares have helped turn this publication into the supportive community we all want to see. You’re welcome to share this video post to invite friends and family to join us!On this cold and cloudy day in the San Francisco Bay Area, my dear friend, Kathy Stone joined me from Calgary, Alberta, Canada. In today’s session, we talked about a slight change coming to our monthly Kathy’s Corner series this week. Is this all new to you? Join us and participate in these ongoing conversations. It’s free! 👇 Coming on Kathy’s CornerThis week, Kathy’s going to come back to a survey she shared last month to check in with each of us about where we are in our challenge of digitizing materials. (Go ahead and add your own replies using the link if you haven’t already). Our sessions are free and everyone is welcome to join. You’re more than welcome to forward this post to friends and family who might find it just inspiring enough to share their pictures of shared ancestors 😉. In talking about our family photos, Paula, Kyla, and Mary each mentioned that they had postcards in their collections. Some were personal, others were collected as found photos at antique shops. That led to a more general conversation about retaining the context for postcards and various ideas for ways to use them to capture and share stories. * Kyla described a collection that she mailed herself as a pre-teen while on vacation. (What a fun way to hear your own voice in history.)* I described an idea suggested for an upcoming wedding: Give reception guests self-addressed stamped postcards so that they can send the newlywed couple nuggets of advice.* Paula described postcards from antiques fairs.* Mary described a collection of postcards that her great-grandmother and grandmother passed down to her.Kathy talked about a postcard with Frankie's heartbreaking message to Frances. Coming Next WeekSince these weekly Live programs give us all a chance to catch up, I took the opportunity to share a snippet of next week’s special program with Diane Burley of Musings of a Storyteller. Diane is a veteran journalist and editor turned narrative essayist. This event came together after a conversation in the comments of one of her posts. ⮕ How do you handle different living memories of the same event? I keep talking about it as the Rashōmon effect, but it’s a larger topic in sociology and family history. Join me in my conversation with Diane on Sunday for our Substack Live program and again on Thursday for this special event. SneakFor those of you who stayed right up to the end, you’ll have heard about a special new “column” I’m thinking about for Projectkin about the American War for Independence (or what we call the Revolutionary War). I was inspired to think about the upcoming 250th anniversary of the signing of our Declaration of Independence on July 4th, 2026, by the special Bicentennial Memory Project. I'll provide more details in a note I'm preparing, where I will ask for your feedback. 😉 Finally, Substack always likes to see me include a quick reminder about the Substack app.There’s a method to it. If you have your publication, you’ll appreciate how generous the Substack app is as a referral network. Once you’re using the app, you’ll see more content that interests you. Yes, Substack’s algorithms are tracking you. This time, their interests are aligned with yours. Get full access to Projectkin at projectkin.substack.com/subscribe