3. TIL about Marion Stokes, a Philadelphia woman who began taping whatever was on t...

TIL about Marion Stokes, a Philadelphia woman who began taping whatever was on television in 1979 and didn't stop until her death in 2012.. The 71,000 VHS and Betamax tapes she made are the most complete collection preserving this era of TV. They are being digitized by the Internet Archive.

My mom also did something like this. Her collection took up a whole room with shelves to the ceiling eventually. She was always taping. You could never touch at least two of our cable boxes. She was anticipating being sick and wanted to make sure she had something to watch.

She ultimately went into a nursing home in middle age and of course couldn't take the collection with her. Even if she did, she wasn't well enough to change tapes and nurse's aides sure as fuck ain't handling that shit.

She died a few years later and I threw it all away.

It was a monument to the cruelty of illness and our inability to get ahead of upcoming disasters even with diligent efforts, which can be undone by a thousand stupid little flaws.

RIP ma - sorry you never got to burn through Next Gen or something one last time an enjoy the fruits of your mad labors. Somewhere there's a pile of 80s and 90s sci fi and comedy shows in a landfill with your handwriting on the labels, one show after the other.

Unwatched for all time.

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