Memories Matter
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Life Story Links: Blog Roundup, May 15, 2018
Mining letters, journals, and homes for life story material; the latest personal history-themed podcasts; plus family history help & a memoir writing contest.
“But in the end, stories are about one person saying to another: This is the way it feels to me. Can you understand what I’m saying? Does it also feel this way to you?” —Kazuo Ishiguro
On Process and Progress
JUST DO IT
Ignoring an instinct to preserve family stories can be an expensive trade-off. And most of us know this—so we do we wait? Last week on the blog I explored the perils of procrastination.
FROM JOURNAL TO MEMOIR
Patricia Charpentier of Florida-based Writing Your Life discusses the benefits of keeping a Five-Year Journal and how to mine your entries for your memoir.
FAMILY HISTORY RESEARCH
Ever wonder if you could benefit from a professional genealogy consultation? The New York Genealogical & Biographical Society tackles the issue in helpful detail.
THE BLUE BACKPACK
Object writing is a technique of constraining your writing to the concrete and specific, letting a “thing you could drop on your foot” be a firm central point around which the story unfolds, says Sarah White of First Person Productions in Madison, Wisconsin, who offers up this essay as inspiration.
TAKE NOTE
In honor of Mother’s Day, Lisa Lombardi O’Reilly, founder of Your Stories Written in California, dives into some family letters to get to know the women in her family a little better.
WHERE TO BEGIN?
Try creating a place-line, instead of a timeline, to aid with organizing your memoir, suggests Massachusetts–based editor Nancy West: a list of places you’ve called home throughout your life—each “a tangible repository of memories.”
New & Noteworthy
LEGACY MOMENTS
Legacy Republic is among the first developers to be a part of the Google Photos partner program, and will be one of the first to launch the integration with Google Photos to their customers.
THE WALLS BETWEEN US
“Every division—metaphorical or real—is a story,” observes award-winning writer Beth Kephart, who invites writers to submit true, previously unpublished memoiristic stories of between 300 and 3,000 words that speak to or illuminate the place of walls in our personal lives or world.
FUTURE OF HISTORY?
On May 5, The Phi Centre and the MIT Open Documentary Lab presented Update or Die: Future Proofing Emerging Digital Documentary Forms.
Listen Up!
Grab a pair of headphones or plug in during your morning commute for these recent podcast offerings from our colleagues:
- Kansas City–based Amy Woods Butler speaks to Denis Ledoux of the Memoir Network on how to grow business as a memoir professional in episode 15 of The Life Story Coach podcast.
- California–based Peta Roberts’s podcast Storyical, which offers encouragement from ordinary people about how they started recording their life histories, features memoirist Libby Atwater in the latest episode.
WHAT PODCASTS DO YOU LOVE???? I am looking for recommendations for storytelling, family history, documentary, and memoir themed podcasts for an upcoming post—please share in the comments below!
Short Takes
Life Story Links: Blog Roundup, May 1, 2018
You want help writing your memoir—who do you search for? Plus, history brought to life through oral testimony, and time travel through old photos & beloved stuff.
“When nothing else subsists from the past...the smell and taste of things remain poised, a long time, like souls...bearing resiliently, on tiny and almost impalpable drops of their essence, the immense edifice of memory.” —Marcel Proust
Buried Treasure
TIME TRAVEL
Plenty of historians have studied the booming time period when New York City’s population fast approached five million, but other than one or two super-centenarians, nobody actually remembers New York in 1911. This immaculately restored film lets us all take a virtual trip there.
REST IN PIECES
Giving up things we've grown attached to can be tough, writes designer Susan Hood of NY–based Remarkable Life Memoirs. How she continues to value those significant possessions after they’re past their prime.
SUMMER OF ’78
Six months ago, a New York parks official came across 2 cardboard boxes that had been sitting around for decades. Inside were 2,924 color slides, pictures made in parks across NYC in the summer of 1978. No one had looked at them for 40 years.
Photo by Paul Hosefros | More photos from the collection will be on view from May 3 through June 14 at the Arsenal Gallery in Central Park, 830 Fifth Avenue, near 64th Street in Manhattan.
Telling Tales
YOUR SINGULAR STORY?
Why write your life story when telling your life stories is likely to be more compelling? Thoughts on memoir, biography, and the power of first-person narrative.
HEALTH BENEFITS, TOO
“Engaging your brain to write your memoirs can leave a recorded history for your descendants as it helps improve your cognitive fitness,” reports Harvard Health Publishing.
THE WORDS WE USE
Personal history, life stories, memoirs—what words are people using when they search online for our services? Kansas City–based Amy Woods Butler thoughtfully explores this important topic.
ECHOES THROUGH GENERATIONS
Family traits, mannerisms, preferences—how often do we say, “You’re just like...”? We take for granted that these connections exist, writes Marjorie Turner Hollman, but keeping the stories going just may ensure those connections remain intact.
AFRICAN AMERICAN LEGACIES
The opening of a lynching memorial in Alabama inspires Clinton Haby of Storykeeping in San Antonio to reflect on the personal biography industry’s role in capturing African-American legacies.
WITNESS TO HISTORY
Patricia Pihl of Real Life Legacies in Mayville, NY, looks back at the 50th anniversary of the Martin Luther King assassination and the benefits of reminiscence through the lens of a very public event.
Short Takes
Life Story Links: Blog Roundup, April 16, 2018
Why we need memoirs of ordinary people and stories of redemption; why visiting our ancestors’ homes is rewarding; and thoughts on history versus genealogy.
“Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future
And time future contained in time past.”
—T. S. Eliot
Close to Home
REDEMPTION STORY
Clinton Haby reflects on how the story of his company, San Antonio-based StoryKeeping, mirrors the stories of challenge and triumph he helps his clients to capture in video. A must-read for the entrepreneurs among us, and for those who just might be lugging up their own metaphorical hill at this moment.
ALL IN THE FAMILY
A wonderfully interesting slideshow of family homesteads around the country is supplemented with a piece about homes as family heirlooms—and what happens when those homes can no longer stay in the family.
FIELD TRIP
Getting out and visiting the sites of your ancestors’ homes and workplaces will reward you with a greater understanding of the imprint they left during their lives, writes Lisa O'Reilly of Your Stories Written in Carpenteria, California.
LEGACY OF LOVE
When someone you care about loses a loved one, it can be difficult to know what to say or how to help. Recently I found compassionate advice in a rather unlikely place.
NO DELAYS, NO DISTRACTIONS
When Nancy West first started her memoir-writing business, she expected her clients to be people who couldn’t write, or who or didn’t like to. “But actually, most of my clients are eminently capable of writing their own memoirs—they just acknowledge that they never will.”
SOMETHING BLUE
While my website doesn’t yet reflect this new signature product (it will soon!), my Dear Daughter, On Your Wedding Day heirloom gift book has proven to be among the most joyful personal history projects I have undertaken. My latest guest post for The Photo Organizers explains why imminent weddings are a great time to walk down memory lane.
The Big Picture
SURVIVING THE ORDINARY
“Give me jaw-dropping true stories, yes indeed, but also give me life stories that leave my jaw alone and move my mind and heart instead, toward a better understanding of myself, of friends and strangers, and of the world we live in every day. What a gift that understanding is when we share it with each other.” Yes!! Mary Laura Philpott on why we need memoirs of regular lives (plus 14 books for your how-to-be-a-person memoir shelf).
HISTORY VS. GENEALOGY
“This is the lesson of America: We are all family here.” Too often historians scorn the imaginative storytelling that often accompanies a genealogical find. History can make use of that transporting empathic power, though, writes John Sedgwick in this opinion piece.
FROM THE HEARTS OF SYRIANS
“I said to one of them, ‘I would like to write the story of what has happened to you.’ He said, ‘I want to forget this.’ ... I said, ‘It’s very painful to remember what happened, but it’s important for your daughter who is two years old. She needs to know the story of how her father crossed the border and reached safety.’”
Short Takes
Life Story Links: Blog Roundup, March 28, 2018
Writing about decisions that shaped your life, inspiration for personal historians who want to improve their craft, and why World Backup Day matters to you.
“I solemnly swear to back up my important documents and precious memories on March 31st.”
Did you know that March 31st is World Backup Day? That’s the pledge quoted above.
“We all know someone who has lost critical data, whether it was their videos, photos, music, book reports, or personal stuff,” says World Backup Day founder Ismail Jadun. In fact, it is estimated that people now create and generate over 1.8 zettabytes of data per year, with 30 percent of people never having backed it up at all.
For business owners, that means protecting the “data” that is our clients’ stories and our livelihood. And for everyone, that means doing something to ensure precious family photos and other digital family history information is not lost.
Take the pledge, and spread the word: I have no doubt that if you are reading this, then you are invested in saving our digital heritage for future generations, too.
Business Minded
HUNTING FOR BOOKS
Because life story books are intended for a small, private audience, they can be hard to find. But for a new personal historian, they can be a goldmine for learning the craft, writes The Life Story Coach Amy Woods Butler of Kansas City, Missouri.
ORIGIN STORY
Bethesda-based longtime personal historian Pat McNees chronicles the history of the Association of Personal Historians, from 20 years of winding success to its sad demise in 2017.
Memoir, Legacy, Memories
DECISIONS, DECISIONS
A historic tragedy in her hometown inspires Patricia Pihl of Real Life Legacies in Western New York to think about the determining forces which shape our lives—events that happen outside of our control as well as the paths we consciously decide to take.
VINTAGE, UNKOWN
While I love browsing nostalgic #foundphotos on Instagram, my scrolling is always accompanied by a twinge of sadness. It’s the storytellers who renew my hope.
Vintage “found photos” from the Anonymous Project’s Instagram feed.
BEQUEATHING A LEGACY
“In spite of the importance of the family history, when clients are asked if they know their great-grandparents’ stories, the answer is too often silence,” writes Michael A. Cole, president of Ascent Private Capital Management. Yet “they don’t want their story to be lost. They want to leave a legacy that lasts for generations.”
SURVIVAL STORY
One man’s resilience in the wake of devastating fires and floods and mudslides encourages California-based personal historian Lisa O'Reilly to remind us of the value of forging meaning from our stories.
FOR YOUR HEALTH
Ruminations on the power of memoir from an unexpected source, Harvard Medical School: “You have a unique firsthand account of your culture and history that others don’t, and leaving a recorded history of your life can be an important gift to both you and your descendants.” Indeed.
Short Takes
#MemoriesMatter #Legacy #LifeStories #Memoir #OralHistory #FamilyHistory
Life Story Links: Blog Roundup, February 5
Click for memoir writing advice, personal history workshops, how you can help make Holocaust victims’ records searchable online, and more life story links.
“We tell ourselves stories in order to live.”
—Joan Didion
Whose story will you tell?
SHOW-DON’T-TELL MOMENTS
We all know the old maxim: “Show, don’t tell.” But sometimes subjects don't believe that it applies to memoir: “Clients want to tell me their feelings,” says Massachusetts–based memoir ghost writer Nancy West. “And yet it's usually easy to find actions that demonstrate those feelings much better than adjectives or adverbs ever can.”
NEW YEAR
“The stories from the past help prepare us for the future. We must be ready to embrace what is coming,” writes Carol McLaren as she embarks on a year filled with changes, including a move from Virginia to Arizona, and a new website for her business, Unique Life Stories, on the horizon. Good luck, Carol!
EVERYONE GETS AN ‘A’
Life story writing workshops are safe places to share one’s story and bond with others as they do the same. Karen Bender of Leaves of Your Life in Herndon, VA, is offering in-person and online workshops for anyone interested in exploring weekly themes.
“IT HAPPENED.”
Millions of documents containing details about victims of the Holocaust and Nazi persecution during WWII still exist today. Through the World Memory Project, you can help make these victims' records searchable online & restore the identities of people the Nazis tried to erase from history, one person at a time.
First-person reads
“DO YOU WANT TO DANCE?”
Sarah White of Madison–based First Person Productions often publishes the writing of others on her blog. Deb Wilbrink answered a New Orleans-themed call for submissions with an engaging coming-of-age story about teenage firsts in the Big Easy.
PHOTOS TELL STORIES, TOO
“The Cubans encouraged exchange of words and hospitality, not discouraged by my minimal Spanish language skills,” says MA–based personal historian Leah Abrahams in her introduction to her photo essay, “Cuba on the Cusp,” on the Social Documentary Network website (“visual stories exploring global themes”).
Bonus links
- This Beginner’s Guide to Backing Up Photos is a must-read for every camera-toting memory keeper.
- Forty first-person essays that talk candidly about love and loss: “Brutally honest and inspiring, Modern Loss invites us to talk intimately and humorously about grief, helping us confront the humanity (and mortality) we all share.” I highly recommend this new book.
- My own blog contribution this week would likely fall on the “low-brow” quadrant of New York mag’s Approval Matrix, but I still submit it’s worth a read: Recapture the spirit of childhood Valentine’s Days with three unique ideas for marking the holiday with meaning—and heart.
Short Takes
#MemoriesMatter #Legacy #LifeStories #Memoir #OralHistory #FamilyHistory
Life Story Links: Blog Roundup, January 23
Our roundup explores the path to legacy, including (mis)adventures with DNA, community memoirs, family history through storytelling & a new Ann Curry TV series.
“Is that the secret meaning of the word ‘story,’ do you think: a storing place of memories?”
—J.M. Coetzee, Foe
Stories are at the heart of what we do. As personal historians, we work across an array of media, from coffee table books and audio recordings to full-fledged video biographies and printed memoirs. No matter the medium, though (and no matter what we call our work), the preservation of stories is key. Oh yes, and story sharing—did I mention the sharing...?!
The Path to Legacy
SENIOR CENTER STORIES
“In 2012, I completed my first community memoir, a compilation with 47 senior citizens from Carleton-Willard Village in Bedford, MA,” says Nancy West of Nancy Shohet West Editorial & Memoir Services. Five years later she was invited back to do a second volume, which launched this week.
200 YEARS OF MEMORIES
How deep is your memory bank? “We often despair when an elderly person passes away, their memories unrecorded,” writes Pam Pacelli Cooper of Massachusetts–based Verissima Productions. “What we often forget to do is seek out the younger person who listened to the stories of their elders. We can record them.”
A TENDENCY TOWARD NOSTALGIA
Rediscovering an old family photo album in my closet prompted me to reflect on the lasting appeal and transformative power of nostalgia.
(MIS)ADVENTURES WITH DNA
“Sometimes your heritage doesn’t have anything at all to do with your genetics—and I didn’t even have to spit in a test tube to figure it out,” writes Kristen V. Brown is this compelling piece that unravels the science behind ancestry DNA tests—and that, certainly, makes us wonder if those colorful pie-chart genetic results reveal something profound about what makes you, you...or if they are simply a fun conversation starter.
Must-See TV
“THROUGH THE EYES OF ORDINARY PEOPLE”
In her new PBS series We’ll Meet Again, veteran journalist Ann Curry focuses on reunions between people whose lives intersected and were torn apart at pivotal moments. The seasoned interviewer honors the power of connection, and the stories she draws forth from her subjects are emotional and, perhaps more important, seem to inspire viewers to reflect on their own lives and moments of connection. View the official trailer and get a peek at upcoming episodes here. The first episode airs tonight.
Short Takes
#MemoriesMatter #Legacy #LifeStories #Memoir #OralHistory #FamilyHistory
Life Story Links: Blog Roundup, January 9
The (unexpected?) audience for your memoir, the wisdom of old people & remembrance of those lost in 2017 round out this week’s life story links blog roundup.
“What I know for sure is that speaking your truth is the most powerful tool we all have.”
—Oprah Winfrey, Golden Globes, 2018
It has been a slow start to the new year for me, hit with a flu that has left me grumpy and tired and well, not at all productive. I’ve had plenty of time to read, though, and since my guilty-pleasure Christmas gift, Tina Brown’s Vanity Fair Diaries (so much dish I recognize from my years in the same mag world!) is too heavy to hold up in my weakened state, I’ve been indulging in memoirs on the Kindle and plenty of link diving on my phone.
I’m almost done with Alan Cumming’s 2014 memoir Not My Father’s Son (well worth the read). I’ve got the current issue of Brevity open on my phone, for creative nonfiction pieces that fulfill and enlighten in short periods of time. And I’ve been perusing Cathi Nelson’s new book, Photo Organizing Made Easy: Going from Overwhelmed to Overjoyed, gleaning tips to share in a future blog post (as I’ve written about before, photographs can make for incredible memory prompts, and being able to find the photos in our overflowing photo libraries is often no easy task).
Here are a few posts and articles that have been on my sick-bed reading list, as well. Happy (and healthy!) New Year to you all, fellow storytellers.
Living, Writing, Remembering
WHY WE READ ABOUT ONE ANOTHER
“My memoir clients assume their readership will be limited to their children and grandchildren,” says Massachusetts-based personal historian Nancy Shohet West. “They are consistently surprised when their nieces, nephews, friends, neighbors, former colleagues, and long-time acquaintances all start clamoring for copies of their own.” If you can picture just one reader, it might be time to start writing.
CLASS NOTES
Craig Siulinski of Sharing Legacies in San Carlos, CA, recently completed leading his first Life Story Writing class based on the principles of guided autobiography. Read about his joyful experience, learn more about guided autobiography, or pick up a book to help you on your path to crafting your own life story. And if you’re in the market for a flash nonfiction writing class, check out Sarah White’s recent post.
REMEMBERING THOSE LOST IN 2017
As part of the New York Times Magazine’s annual The Lives They Lived issue, editors invited readers to contribute a photograph and a story of someone close to them who died this year: The Lives They Loved.
“TALKING TO ALL THOSE OLD PEOPLE”
“No work I have ever done has brought me as much joy and hope, or changed my outlook on life as profoundly,” writes John Leland of his year interviewing elderly New Yorkers. His book Happiness Is a Choice You Make: Lessons From a Year Among the Oldest Old will be published on Jan. 23. A. E. Hotchner reviewed: “Remarkable revelations gleaned from those who, in their superannuated years, have discovered rewarding benefits from the life that actually surrounds them.”
CELEBRATING LIFE, AND ART
A film called “funny and life-affirming,” Faces Places explores themes of art, vision, regular people, and aging, all with tenderness and wit, energy and delight. Find showtimes in select cities.
Short Takes
#MemoriesMatter #Legacy #LifeStories #Memoir #OralHistory #FamilyHistory
Life Story Links: Blog Roundup, December 11
Oral history during the holidays, how not to conduct an interview, power of voice to evoke memories & a few first person accounts to whet your life story whistle.
“We tell ourselves stories in order to live.”
—Joan Didion
With so many diverse links of interest to storytellers and family historians this week, why don’t we skip introductions and dive right in—shall we?
Listen Up
(JUST) AUDIO?
Meghan Vigeant of Stories To Tell in Maine is making a change to her personal history business: She’s paring away the multitude of offerings she once listed, including book production and memoir coaching, and is now focusing on her audio services: audio memoirs & oral histories. Read why this time, it’s all about the audio.
FROM PHONE MESSAGES TO FAMILY STORIES
“When I was a kid spending the night at my grandmother’s house in Harrisville, Michigan, I’d stay up past my bedtime and lay on the bedroom floor with an ear pressed against the heat grate, straining to hear the conversations of the adults in the parlor below,” says Rebekah Smith. She was “seeking out good company and soaking up their stories” then, something she continues to do now in her QuOTed podcast. Check out the 30 mini episodes the Minneapolis-based Smith posted as part of National Podcast Post Month in November 2017.
Signs of the Times
THE FAMILY TABLE
“Occasionally, I would come home from work and find a strange, unshaven man dressed in rags, sitting at our kitchen table,” Ellie Kahn's grandmother told her. Ellie learned of her great-grandmother’s Depression-era generosity (serving strangers entire meals in her home, “from soup to dessert”) while the family shared stories around the Chanukah table. There is no better time to tell such precious stories than during the holidays, and Ellie Kahn, a Los Angeles-based oral historian and owner of Living Legacies Family Histories, offers up myriad suggestions for starting new storytelling traditions this year.
HOW NOT TO CONDUCT AN INTERVIEW
“Those of us who interview others for a living can learn a lot from [Matt] Lauer’s disastrous outing,” writes NYC personal historian Samantha Shubert, who goes on to detail four strategic & substantive ways to get the most out of any conversational interview—not à la the former Today Show host’s example.
Visual Storytelling
When a photographer sets out to live with and document the everyday lives of an order of contemplative nuns in New Zealand, the silent observance reveals a rich narrative.
A photograph by Cam McLaren on display at the New Zealand Geographic Photographer of the Year exhibition
First Person Reflections
ON CARS...
After reading Sarah White’s recent post about her first car (“The Pinto”), guest writer Dorothy Ross submitted a tale of her own youthful automotive daring to True Stories Well Told. (“I named my sweet car Daisy, after the girl in The Great Gatsby,” reflects Ross.) Consider adding your voice to the reminiscences about first cars on Madison, WI-based Sarah White’s blog.
...AND MORE...
- Carol McLaren of Unique Life Stories in Pinon, Arizona writes about her father on the occasion of his 91st birthday.
- Hear, Here is an oral history project in LaCrosse, Wisconsin, that focuses on place-based stories that bring the experiences of the everyday person to light.