Many thanks to Kathy Stone, Ann Rockley, Linda Teather, and all of you who have taken the time to read and engage with this special story and idea. We’re supporting and inspiring each other to take these next steps into history.

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If you enjoy pieces like these, dropping a ❤️ below 👇 is another way to say thank you. It introduces this post to new viewers, benefitting both Projectkin and our guest, Lori Olson White.

The idea for today’s program came up soon after Lori Olson White dropped her first post about Annie Deihm and her 1876 Century Safe. This incredible 5-part series takes us from an idea to the challenges she faced in pulling it together and delivering it to the US Capitol.

As Lori shares in her new “Building My Bridge to 2076” series, Annie’s Century Safe idea wasn’t a spur-of-the-moment project. It’s held together by a thoughtful method that’s both coherent and extensible. Lori’s time capsule collapses the national method down to a personal scale.

In her talk today, Lori shared what she’d learned so far about Annie’s methods. The irony is that significant elements of this project went horribly wrong. The several-ton safe was forgotten. The code was lost, as was the key to the inner glass enclosure. And yet, it succeeded. It wasn’t magic, nor force of will.

In her ongoing project to create her own Century Safe in the form of a family time capsule, Lori has methodically parsed Annie’s project to document the elements that can give a time capsule its best chances for success, among them are tips you can use now:

* Make it participatory: Annie invited participants to sign their names to a book and included a line for their descendants to sign as well. For various reasons, this counter-signature line hasn’t worked yet, but the lesson isn’t one to be missed.

* Be intentional about the goals and obsessive about the details: Annie took her time to consider every detail she could imagine from the start to the changes she made along the way.

* Get buy-in from everyone involved: Armed with the scale of her mission, she pursued the project like a salesperson, getting the meetings and ensuring everyone understood their role.

* Make yourself a better ancestor: If you’ve uncovered a diary, album, book, or other compilation curated by an ancestor, you will appreciate the joy of insight into what their lives were actually like. Annie’s process of including objects and contemporaneous artifacts was a first step here.

* Document the process along the way: Taking the time to document how you built your time capsule can inspire your descendants to make their own preparations for future descendants. It’s an obvious pay-it-forward mechanism.

Lori is currently working on a 23-part series documenting her process as she creates her own “century safe,” a family time capsule to be opened 50 years after the American semiquincentennial in 2076. This post was part 1:

If you’re a regular participant in our programs here at Projectkin, you probably have already taken note of the obvious technical challenges posed by the archival requirements of such a project. Archival sleeves, acid-free paper, and a thoughtful selection of enclosures can make a huge difference in preserving the carefully curated materials inside. Join us in May as Lori joins Kathy Stone for her special time capsule episode of Kathy’s Corner.

As Projectkin, this story is especially interesting because it represents storytelling in an interactive form. You’re involving the entire family in telling a story through chapters and points of view.

Remember, too, that this isn’t limited to a family. Annie’s project encompassed the entire country in 1876. Lori’s plan is to include her family and extended family. It could be your community group, neighborhood, or church; it doesn’t matter. Lori’s documented process is now sorting out the details that do matter. I expect we’ll all be following her on her journey.

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