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Life Story Links: November 13, 2020
From deep thoughts on biography & finding your identity through writing to lighter fare on music & family photography, a roundup for memory-keepers everywhere.
“A qualification for writing good memoir is being courageous about looking at the truth of your life.”
—Joyce Maynard
On this day in 1940, Disney’s animated classic Fantasia was released. This lobby card features a scene from the “The Sorcerer's Apprentice” segment in the film (and, of course, features one of my very favorite things—a book). © The Walt Disney Company
Memorializing Our Lives
IN CONVERSATION WITH A BIOGRAPHER
“At the beginning, you don’t know what you’re looking for. The shape comes at you as you get deeper into the archive, and a strange force field starts to grow…” Hermione Lee, writing her first biography of a living subject in Tom Stoppard, on how to write a life.
“HERE I AM”
Poet Javier Zamora says that his poems are like a first draft of him understanding his own life. Here he is in conversation about using writing as a vehicle to make sense of his lived experience, and how his memoir must differ from his autobiographical poetry.
PITCH IN
A surprising number of my recent projects have been tribute books overflowing with letters honoring someone special, whether for a milestone birthday or a celebration of life. Now, a group gifting option makes such projects accessible to even more people.
Artifacts of Times Gone By
SLIDE INTO THE PAST
"I realized that by placing the slides in my current landscape, I created not only a connection between his life and mine, but a trail of memories, each that had its own association for both of us." Photographer Catherine Panebianco honors her parents using her father’s old slides.
UPON MY DEATH…
“A series of meticulously curated Spotify playlists is just as valuable as a beloved record collection; seeing the last Google search someone made is every bit as intimate as the unwashed mug left on the table, the last thing to have touched their lips.” A host of companies have arisen to help preserve our digital legacies.
A SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY
“The first time I put the records on to see if they worked, it was like grandpa wasn’t gone and he was playing a private concert for me in my home,” historian Jason Burt says. He rediscovered, remastered and released the music of his grandfather’s WWII Air Force band.
...and a Few More Links
Bruce Springsteen’s autobiographical new album
Riveting TV interviews with Titanic survivors
Soldier’s note is echo of World War I era.
Maureen Taylor, aka The Photo Detective, puts the spotlight on Collectionaire as a digital hub for curating family history materials.
Dinty W. Moore suggests five books that have helped define flash nonfiction.
Driven to document the moment, more and more people are journaling since the pandemic began.
Short Takes
Life Story Links: October 13, 2020
A roundup of recent stories for anyone interested in life story preservation, memoir writing, and personal history—this one’s got a little of everything.
“When a story is told, it is not forgotten. It becomes something else, a memory of who we were; the hope of what we can become.”
—Tatiana de Rosnay, Sarah’s Key
Vintage postcard (1907-1918) depicting Forest Avenue in the Bronx, New York, courtesy The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs: Picture Collection, The New York Public Library Digital Collection.
Of Hearth and Home
WHAT WE COOKED
“Someday I imagine having grandchildren...and I imagined them asking me, ‘Mimi’ (or whatever they might call me), ‘what did you do during the quarantine?’ And I thought there ought to be something better to say than, ‘Watched Netflix and ate popcorn.’ ” Sam Sifton on (not yet) keeping a Covid food journal.
A MOST UNUSUAL CELEBRATION?
Musings on Thanksgiving, togetherness, and making (and preserving) holiday memories this year... How will you manifest gratitude and spend the day in 2020?
WELCOME HOME
“How do you create a storied home when your family's story is just beginning in it?” Kim Winslow on using your family’s new home as a canvas for family storytelling.
Keeping Track…
NEW APP FOR RECORDING MEMORIES
“The mounting death toll from coronavirus led innovator and entrepreneur Yehuda Hecht to ponder the regret many are feeling at not having paid more attention to the stories of parents, grandparents, and other loved ones.” So he created a family history app, SelfieBook, to help people record the stories of their lives.
SEALED FOR LATER
“While many of us would rather forget 2020, we’re living through a historic moment that we may eventually want to remember.” A brief guide to making a 2020 pandemic time capsule.
Telling Our Stories
EXCAVATING OTHER PEOPLE’S LIVES
Biographer Robert D. Richardson believed “life-writing should be gripping, vivid, and intense, while giving a sense of the person’s daily existence that ‘links the reader’s life with the subject’s.’”
“THIS THING CALLED LIFE”
“I didn’t quit Prince, I just quit writing about him or hanging around his world. I still don’t know if I was brave or an idiot to walk away from the only real scoop rock and roll had to offer in those days,” Neal Karlen writes in this excerpt from his new book.
CHROMOSOMAL BREADCRUMBS
“My mother must have known long before I figured it out that motherhood is, at its core, a series of unanswered letters. Some tucked into envelopes. Others tucked into our cells,” Amory Rowe Salem writes in this first-person piece on breast cancer and family.
COMMUNITY & CONVERSATION
When her town went into lockdown, 60-year-old Jinny Savolainen wanted to do something meaningful with her time—so she began interviewing neighbors, which, she says, “gave me a sense of purpose and meaning that I badly needed.”
Oh, Personal History!
THIS BIZ OF OURS
Bethesda–based personal historian Pat McNees updates a 2008 article on the business of personal history, including what types of projects connote “personal history,” and how to find a market for such work.
BACK TO BASICS
Many folks want to preserve their life stories for the next generation but don’t know where to start. Here are three steps to finding the best personal historian to help (including, ahem, a note on what a personal historian is).
...and a Few More Links
First photos of enslaved people raise many questions about the ethics of viewing.
“The honor was all mine,” reporter says of telling this spy’s story.
Auschwitz survivor and memoirist Ruth Klüger has died.
Read the September/October issue of Archival Outlook.
A new season of Finding Your Roots with Henry Louis Gates, Jr., returns October 13.
Short Takes
Life Story Links: May 5, 2020
A plethora of stories about storytelling in the age of Covid; musings on what we pass on to our kin; plus video and biography links worth your time.
“Nothing can match the treasure of common memories…”
—Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
What We Pass On
THREADS OF TIME
“Necessity prompted me to pull out my fabric and sewing machine to create cloth face masks for our family, but Mom, gone 20 years now, was right here with me as I stitched, and remembered lessons she taught me,” Marjorie Turner Hollman writes in this reflection on her family’s sewing traditions.
AN INHERITANCE OF VALUES
It’s Leave A Legacy Month in Canada, and Scott Simpson of Heirloom Videos by Cygnals encourages everyone, wealthy or not, to leave a legacy beyond financial gifts: “What gets recorded gets remembered.”
STORYTELLING SCHOOL
The Moth has created a weekly educational blog with family-friendly stories and activities for children of all ages: Engage the hearts and minds of the young people in your lives through storytelling.
The Covid Diaries
LIVES INTERRUPTED
A window pane. A hospital ID. Unfolded laundry. When a history professor in California challenged his students to choose an artifact to represent their experiences during this pandemic, some of their responses moved him to tears.
A CASE FOR CORONAVIRUS JOURNALING
We are experiencing “a period that historians will debate for decades, even centuries to come. Our chance to control some of that narrative is in our hands.” And when it's safe again, “we will want to be able to look back at how far we have come and celebrate one another—together, knowing the story of our experience will live on.”
“REMEMBER WHEN…”
Memory researchers say these months will eventually become a blur for those of us isolating at home. A look into how memory works, and which memories may prove more lasting.
A VALUABLE INTERGENERATIONAL RESOURCE
Let us remind ourselves of the many positive roles that our grandparents typically play: as kin-keepers, caregivers, storytellers, and moving reservoirs of social histories. Of grandparents, memories, and the pandemic.
PRESS PAUSE
I can feel overwhelmed by all the ways I “should” be spending my newfound time at home. It’s okay, though, to get lost in our memories or stare out a window.
PRESERVING THEIR ‘PIECE OF THE EARTH’S DIRT’
The recent stay-at-home directive has led personal historian Pat Pihl to think about the role that home plays in developing our character. Here she shares one client’s reflections on 50+ years “at the farm” and the impact it has on three generations.
The Writers of Our Lives
THE ACCIDENTAL BIOGRAPHER
“She was an unknown writer with no experience in biographies when she wrote to the elusive Samuel Beckett. To her surprise, he wrote back.” This obituary for award-winning biographer Deirdre Bair entices me to read her work. Here, she is remembered as a friend.
THE MEMOIR IN ESSAYS
“An author’s ability to forgive that earlier version of herself is especially prevalent in the memoir-in-essays, perhaps because of the extended time period covered as a writer composes essays across years or even decades.” LitHub offers up a reading list of recent autobiographical essay collections.
ART AND OBJECT
“I believe that work like mine...can be inspiring to anyone who’s ever felt undervalued or unheard, or anyone who’s inherited material related to someone interesting but unknown,” Eve Kahn says. Her biography of American Impressionist Mary Rogers Williams used a trove of personal letters to recreate a life.
In Video
“DEAR DIARY…”
Hat-tip to personal historian Michelle Sullivan for sharing this video, which she so aptly captions “Kent State: a child’s perspective...or, the importance of encouraging journaling by children.” It’s a fine example of a personal history in the guise of a public radio news report.
“THE MAN WITH A BEAUTIFUL SMILE”
“New York’s elderly population need extra special care. Their stories should also be celebrated,” editors at Untapped New York say as they introduce this documentary project about an almost 100-year-old New Yorker and Holocaust survivor, George Sachs.
...and a Few More Links
Have you heard of The Mass Observation Archive?
How looking back at our old photos boosts mood and relaxes the mind
Amid the pandemic, a family learns their neighbors are their long-lost relatives.
Short Takes
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.