In the Nick of Time

An app whose time has come: StoryCorps.

StoryCorps is working with high school teachers across the country to ask students to interview a grandparent or elder over the 2015 Thanksgiving holiday weekend.

Using the new free StoryCorps mobile app, participants will be able to upload their recordings to the StoryCorps archive at the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress. In one holiday weekend we will capture an entire generation of American lives and experiences.

It's not a requirement that the maximum-40-minute conversation be uploaded to the Library of Congress. The interviewer can keep it for herself and/or edit it before uploading.

The app is easy to use, and barriers come down quickly because a camera isn't stuck in the subject's face.

There’s something about the presence of a microphone in a StoryCorps session that changes the dynamic between two people. It’s a license to say things that wouldn’t normally come up, and ask questions you don’t usually get to ask.....The generation that might not want to broadcast every whim on Facebook doesn’t necessarily have a problem sharing deeper knowledge. “We all want to know we are not going to be forgotten and that our lives matter.”

Most of us regret not being able to hear again the voices of those who were precious to us.

This Thanksgiving we have an opportunity not to add to those regrets.