Like most dads I know, I took the job of family archivist seriously, mostly because I have so little of my own childhood to look back on: a shoebox of bent photographs, some undated, a few with faces nobody in the family can name anymore. I wanted my sons to have more than fragments. So I did what a careful person does. I built a backup system. Copies in more than one place, protected against a dead hard drive, a fire, a break-in. For a while that felt like the finish line. Then one evening a different question walked in and sat down. What if nothing happens to the files, but something happens to me?
Read More