Des Moines, Iowa
Des Moines is Iowa's capital city, built around its neighborhoods, its rivers and one very famous fair. The way you know it is worth keeping, exactly as you would tell it.
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Which year at the Iowa State Fair stands out most, and who is with you when you picture it?
For many people in Des Moines, the State Fair marks the years like a calendar, and ToldForward works in a similar way, one small question a day, so your answers trace your life season by season. Write about the butter cow or your neighborhood's corner store. Either way, it is kept in your own words for the people you pick.
Des Moines, Iowa
Every August the Iowa State Fair fills its grounds in Des Moines, carrying a history of about 170 years. Its butter cow, a cow sculpted from butter, is a tradition that dates to 1911. For a lot of people, the fair works like a calendar of a life: the first year you went, the year you showed an animal, the year you took someone special. What are your fair stories, and who do you picture there with you? Which corner of the fairgrounds still feels like yours?
Des Moines is Iowa's capital, and it is a city of dozens of neighborhoods. Each one has its own corner stores, its own school pride and its own way of giving directions. You might have grown up on one street and made a home on another, or you might have only just found your place here. What makes your neighborhood feel like home? Who made it that way? Your answers capture a version of Des Moines that lives in your memories, and nowhere else quite the same.
Des Moines cares for more than 4,000 acres of parkland and more than 100 miles of trails, and the Des Moines River runs right through the city. Those paths and riverbanks hold a lot of ordinary moments: an evening walk after a long week, a bike ride with a friend, a quiet bench when you needed to think. Moments like these slip away easily and are lovely to read years later. Set them down now, in your own words, while they are still clear.
Small, steady steps that add up to something only you could make.
About a place, a person, a choice you made, or something you believe.
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The people you name receive it after a waiting period of at least 6 months.
How your words are found
The people you name receive your whole record. With Archive Membership they can also ask a guide, which looks through what you wrote and shows them your own words.
The whole record
Everyone you name receives the same complete record.
Exact quotes
The guide shows your words as you wrote them, dated.
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It never claims to be you, and it tells people so.
ToldForward sends one friendly question a day, and you can answer in a sentence or a page, typed or spoken. You choose the people who will one day receive your record, and with Archive Membership they can ask a guide that finds your exact words, quoted and dated, and never pretends to be you.