You’re never too old to blog

A senior in Oz, Olive Riley, is is blogging at age 107. She blogs at The Life of Riley (what a great title!) Blogging is a great way for seniors to share their life stories and experiences through what is called “legacy blogging” .

It makes me think of my great-aunt who migrated to Australia from Malaysia when she retired from teaching school. She is now in her late 70s and lives with one of her children Every morning she walks down to the local library and logs on to check emails and keep in touch with our extended family who live all over the world. We have a family group site on Yahoo and she takes part in the conversation and news in that group site as well.

My grandfather told us the story of our ancestor who migrated to Malaysia from China, one Xmas thirty years ago and I captured that on an old hissy cassette. He died a year later and that is the only recording of his voice and our family story. It is very precious to us and to preserve it for posterity, I’ve uploaded it as a podcast on my other blog, Fusion View.

My father has also featured as a Guest Blogger on Fusion View with his Memories of Malaya series. He’s 70 today and he writes out his posts by hand and has his secretary type them up!

In Singapore, the oldest blogger in the nation conducted a talk for seniors about how to blog late last year. I’d really like to know the outcome of that event and see some of the blogs that he inspired.

I hope that many other families will be inspired by Olive to encourage their seniors to blog or to record and share their stories in some way through interviews that are then uploaded to social networks like blogs or podcast sites.