The Time Capsule WebRing is a ring of personal home pages here on GeoCities.us devoted to local history, family history, collections, and the way things used to be. A county historian's notes, a sportswriter's forty years of Friday nights, a church cookbook, a box of motel matchbooks, a father's Korean War notebook transcribed by his son: different subjects, but the same impulse, which is to write things down before they are forgotten.

I started the ring in 1999. I am Eleanor Whitcomb, the volunteer county historian for Whitcomb County, and I keep the ring the same way I keep the society's collection: with care, in order, and with a bias toward things that will still matter in fifty years.

How it works. Every member page carries the Time Capsule ring box near the bottom. Next takes you to the following site in the ring, Prev to the one before, and List Sites brings you back here. The ring is a circle: after the thirteenth site you arrive back at the first. Set aside an evening and go all the way around.

Thirteen sites, in ring order, as of September 1999.

From number 13, Next takes you around to number 1 again.

The ring is open to any personal home page on GeoCities.us whose subject is history, family history, a collection, or the way things used to be, and whose owner is willing to put the ring box on the page and keep it there. Business pages are not eligible. Pages that are still mostly "under construction" are welcome to apply once there is something on them to read.

To join, send me an e-mail at [email protected] with:

1. The address of your page here on GeoCities.us;
2. Your name as you would like it to appear on the list;
3. One sentence describing the page, which I may edit lightly to match the others.

I visit every page before adding it, and I will write back within a week or two with your place in the ring and the addresses of the sites before and after you. You then put the ring box on your page (the code below, with your neighbors' addresses filled in) and let me know when it is up. I check the whole ring on the first of every month to be sure every box is present and every link works. A page whose box goes missing for two months in a row is dropped, with regret and a note.

The ring box. Copy this to the bottom of your page. Replace PREV and NEXT with the addresses I send you, and OWNER with your own name.

The button, , is already in the GeoCities.us clip art library, so you need not copy it anywhere; the code above points to it directly.