Day 205 - Nov. 5
Listening to: Goodbye Stranger
Thought for the day: History must be written of, by and for the survivors.

A teensy weensy part of my job requires me to play history detective. I absolutely LOVE this part of my job. Usually the assignment involves finding pictures of someone’s grandfather or great grandfather. This time, our HR department asked me to find info on an employee from days gone by. Their request required me to bury my head in this book which contains approximately 5 years of company newsletters (I have all of the newsletters going back to 1918). When I dive into one of these books, my ADD is completely silenced.

The most interesting find for me today was not in this book. My search also required me to sift through a long-lost filing cabinet. In the cabinet, I discovered hundreds of old index cards that had been recycled for another purpose. The original use of the cards was to identify retired employees by retirement date, birth date, and reason for retirement. All of births were listed as ’80 or ’75……………and that would be 1880 or 1875. All of them had retired in the 1940s. I had a creepy-feeling moment when I realized the hundreds of IDs that I held in my hand belonged to people that are now dead. Shiver.