Last week two boxes of family artifacts arrived unceremoniously from my father's wife. I had half been expecting something as my sister had called a few days earlier to say she'd received a package of Dad's coffee mugs in the mail. We laughed at that. Neither of us had rated these cups on our respective lists of important memories. We both realized how beholden we were to a woman who, while sharing 27 years of our father's history with us, did so with apprehension. It was she who now filtered our history for us. I was hoping my bar mitzvah...

Got up early and took the Metro to the Library of Congress today to start looking for my mother's episode of It Could Be You. The Reference Librarian pulled the microfiche rolls of NBC's master scheduling list for the dates they had. Each roll contains 3 or 4 days worth of daily schedules, timed program scripts plus transcripts for each show. I was amazed to be viewing this history. Transcripts of early Today show episodes with Dave Garroway and company reveal a great slice into that time. I was less amazed by the effect scrolling a microfilm reader has on my...

In the last couple of months I've been unearthing some family assets. Since my father's death last October, I have been writing profusely about our relationship. He was a secretive man and found a place in an equally secretive job, as part of the legendary Skunkworks at Lockheed. So conducting family archeology or sleuthing (each apt metaphors for the process) has taken up a good deal of my free time of late. In the five months since his death, I have been piecing together his and our family's lives. Dad never talked about his early years. It was up to my...