Grandma’s recipe card has more family history on it than most photo albums. Copy it down.

Family history survives in odd containers, and a stained card with handwriting on it holds more than most photographs, because it records what people did repeatedly rather than how they once posed. Those objects are fragile and backed up nowhere. When they go, an entire ordinary layer of a family goes quietly with them.

Copy one down this month, photographing the handwriting if you can. Ask who it came from and when they used to make it. Then cook it badly once, because that keeps it a living thing instead of an archive.