Memories Matter
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Life Story Links: March 3, 2020
A trove of family history finds, compelling reasons to preserve your life stories, and recommended first person reads that bring our ancestors' voices to life.
“To acknowledge our ancestors means we are aware that we did not make ourselves…We remember them because it is an easy thing to forget: that we are not the first to suffer, rebel, fight, love, and die.”
—Alice Walker
In honor of today’s Super Tuesday designation: Two women preparing a women’s suffrage poster for a parade in the nation’s capital in 1914, represented on a vintage postcard. Photo courtesy Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, Washington D.C.
Why Preserve Our Stories?
“I WISH I KNEW”
“As significant as parents are in life, their adult children often don’t know what shaped them and what they were like before they became mom and dad.” There is a growing interest, though, in understanding our parents’ lives, and capturing their stories for the next generation.
MEETING LONG LOST FAMILY
“It may be just a few iPhone videos, but it’s treasure to me. And it’s a start,” writes adoptee Jon de la Luz of the oral history recordings he took of his biological mother’s only living sibling, 87-year-old tia Maria Antonia, whom he only recently learned of and met.
Grief & Remembrance
A DEEPER PURPOSE
“The point of all this is to make a difficult thing like dying or loving someone who is dying less difficult. In that sense, creating a When I Die file is an act of love,” and the authors of A Beginner’s Guide to the End: Practical Advice for Living Life and Facing Death here offer some concrete tips for how to do so.
THE GIFT OF MEMORIES
During the grieving process, “all attention is on trying to understand the loss, remembering your loved one, and figuring out how to move forward. All other sounds are now muffled in the background, things that seems to matter before often seem frivolous.” Noelle Rollins on ways to remember our lost loved ones and honor this sacred time.
THE BIG GAME
“For emotionally stunted straight men in the suburbs, sports are one of the few arenas in which one has the freedom to get hysterical. You can yell, you can cry, you can throw a remote across the room, and all will be forgiven as manly, heteronormative devotion.” Chris Ames writes with a sharp, fresh voice about the intersection of father time, basketball, family, and loss—a most magnetic read.
Family History Finds
DISCOVERING HER FAMILY HISTORY
As part of a monthly resolution challenge to learn more about her family's past, journalist Kelsey Hurwitz gathered wisdom from genealogy gurus, and in the process found a stronger sense of self.
#NOTATROOTSTECH, TOO?
RootsTech 2020 ended a few days ago, but if you missed the big family history conference, you can still benefit from many of the presentations. Here I highlighted sessions, available on video, of interest to life storytellers of all kinds.
VAST RESOURCES REPOSITORY
For the first time in its 174-year history, the Smithsonian Institution has released 2.8 million high-resolution images from across its collections onto an open access online platform for patrons to peruse and download free of charge.
A MULTIGENERATIONAL CONNECTION
Taneya Y. Koonce had a broad notion of why her family saved bits and pieces about a pastor her family was close to, but would descendants wonder what the items were doing in the family archive?
Ancestors’ Voices
ARTIFACTS LEAD TO PERSONAL DISCOVERY
In 2017, 13 drivers’ licenses that had been confiscated from Jews during Kristallnacht were discovered in a government office of a small German town. Last month, one of the descendants recounted how the high schoolers got in touch with her, and how she traveled to Germany to unveil a lost chapter of her family history.
FROM FARM BOY TO FEARSOME WARRIOR
February 19, 2020, marked the 75th anniversary of the start of the Battle of Iwo Jima. The last surviving Medal of Honor winner (out of 27 sailors and Marines so honored) recalled his story.
LOVE LETTERS
When Helene Stapinski reads a stash of love letters from her young father to her mother, she discovers a man she never knew: “Now that I knew him better, I missed and grieved for him even more. I wanted him here to draw him out and laugh with. And cry with. I dried my eyes and read on.”
THE TAPESTRY OF AMERICAN IMMIGRATION
The Tenement Museum’s “How to Be an American” podcast returns for a second season, with eight new episodes and stories from the history of stickball in New York City to historic trash to an “out of this world” immigrant success story. Listen to a preview here:
...and a Few More Links
She calls her numerous journals her “mind turned inside out.”
Should there be a code of ethics for archivists?
The Augusta Chronicle shines a light on preserving family history through biographies.
Technology uncovers forgotten graves in Maryland.
Short Takes
Life Story Links: February 18, 2020
Vivian Gornick's book recommendations and Dani Shapiro's podcast; finding meaning in our—and our parents'—memories; capturing stories in words and pictures.
“History isn’t about dates and places and wars. It’s about the people who fill the spaces between them.”
—Jodi Picoult
Vintage valentine courtesy the Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs: Picture Collection, The New York Public Library. “Love’s message.” New York Public Library Digital Collections.
Looking Back, Finding Meaning
“THE LAST CONVERSATION”
In the latest installment of The New Yorker Documentary series, Robert Kornberg examines his parents’ partnership through the lens of its ending. “The film, which animates the couple’s life through a stream of archival photos and videos, crescendoes to the moment when Robert visits Sarah [who has Alzheimer’s] to deliver the news of Isidore’s death.”
The difficult questions of dementia: How does a son tell his mother, who has been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, about the death of her own husband? Listen to his recounting of the experience in the 10-minute short documentary “The Last Conversation.” Photograph courtesy “The Last Documentary,” The New Yorker Documentary series.
THE GIRL SHE ONCE WAS
“Without an archive, where is my evidence? What can I point to and declare: Those first twenty years of my life mattered?” Patricia Fancher writes. “I want someone to tell a story of an outspoken little girl, willing to take risks. But I’ve lost those memories and I have no family to tell me those stories.”
MY BIRTHDAY WISH
On the occasion of my fiftieth birthday, I decided to use social media for some story sharing—well, to ask for stories for my birthday, that is. Spoiler alert: The gifts I received in response were more touching and more generous than I ever could have anticipated (thank you!).
Collecting Stories
TRANSFORMATIVE STORYTELLING
Since 2012 students at Colby College in Maine have been visiting a retirement home to write residents’ biographies as part of the volunteer-based Legacy Storytellers. The intergenerational relationships that ensue are worth even more than the resulting books.
“COURTSHIP, MARRIAGE...AND MURDER”
A last minute offer of a cache of family letters, when finishing up a family memoir, led Massachusetts–based personal historian Marjorie Turner Hollman on the path of learning about an unsolved murder in her family.
PORTRAITS OF LIFE
“Each interview has been a journey in its own right and I listened to each individual’s life story as I photographed them. It was like taking a ride on the ‘train of life,’ trading significant and sentimental moments from their past,” says photographer Giuseppe Della Maria, creator of coffee table book Portraits of Tuscan Centenarians.
Recent Recommendations
READING LIST
These five books that made a difference in Vivian Gornick’s writing life will likely make a difference in yours, as well, with lessons including how to write a personal essay and how to find an organizing principle for a short biography.
FAMILY SECRETS
Season three of Dani Shapiro’s “Family Secrets” podcast launched this month. The show, derived from her wildly popular memoir of the same name (which I highly recommend), is worth a listen for a variety of reasons, from Shapiro's soothing voice to her warmly pointed interviewing style, from the intriguing stories to her well-chosen guests who, of late, are often memoir writers themselves (secrets, it would seem, make for fertile fodder).
...and a Few More Links
StoryCorps stories to celebrate Black History Month
Can a presidential memoir (even a ghostwritten one) give an honest picture?
Preserving family recipes is an act of love.
Short Takes
Life Story Links: February 4, 2020
A wealth of good reading on topics including Holocaust remembrance, telling our own stories, and bearing witness to the stories of others.
“Tell your story. Take the data of your life and turn it into real people doing real things and you will move mountains. You will change the world.”
—Dave Lieber
Camp buddies, Christmas Seals Camp, Haverstraw, New York, January 1, 1943. Photograph by Gordon Parks, courtesy Library of Congress.
Bearing Witness to Stories of Others
THE FINE ART OF LISTENING
“Good listeners ask good questions. One of the most valuable lessons I’ve learned as a journalist is that anyone can be interesting if you ask the right questions.” Kate Murphy, author of You’re Not Listening: What You’re Missing and Why It Matters, on how to talk less and listen more.
CREATING A NARRATIVE IDENTITY
“When the future is running out, can we make more of the past? I often struggle with my role as a caregiver for patients at the end of life. I know the most healing things I can offer aren’t the things I usually do,” writes Dhruv Khullar, M.D., M.P.P. in this thoughtful piece. What are those healing things? “To sit. To listen. To explore what it’s all meant.”
FULL CIRCLE
A son’s photographic journey through Alzheimer’s with his dad results in a grant with which he plans to create a book. What’s up next inspires me just as much: “He has begun making appointments with his mother, who is living in his childhood home, to photograph her…. She plays Mahjong, goes to the grocery store, keeps busy. She is full of life. And he wants to be there with her, documenting it.”
FIGHTING FOR THE ANONYMOUS
“It hurt like hell to hold her story. It hurts like hell to tell it. It would hurt a thousand times worse than hell if I hadn’t stopped to hear it. We are to blame when we do not memorialize the living,” writes Beth Kephart in this “memoirist’s chant.”
Telling Our Own Stories
SEALED WITH LOVE
“A different human wrote to the 24-year-old me than the one who wrote to the 44-year-old, but there are aspects of her in these later ages,” writes Ann Napolitano, a novelist who writes to her future self every ten years. “One of the lessons in these letters is that our lives have chapters—I just happen to have an envelope to mark each of mine.”
NO EXCUSES
For anyone intimidated by the idea of writing their life story, here are four specific tactics to write their way in, one memory at a time, and finally get that memoir started.
PICTURES HOLD STORIES
“Photos will spark your memory much better...if a small number of them are curated into an album. This more manageable collection of photos will increase the chances you’ll engage with them on a meaningful basis later on.”
Voices of the Holocaust
January 27, 2020, was International Holocaust Remembrance Day, and many media outlets helped to remember and honor the six million Jewish victims and millions of other victims of the Holocaust. A handful follow.
NEVER FORGET
Edith Fox sometimes told friends she wanted the words “Holocaust Survivor” on her tombstone. But she didn’t want to talk about what she had endured. It was simply too painful. Until her health recently began to fail and she decided, at age 90, that she didn’t want her story to die with her.
“LETTER FROM AN UNKNOWN WOMAN”
In an excerpt from A Bookshop in Berlin: The Rediscovered Memoir of One Woman’s Harrowing Escape from the Nazis, Patrick Modiano introduces us to the sweeping journey of Françoise Frenkel's No Place to Lay One’s Head, which Modiano opines belongs in the company of literary giants.
FACES, LIVES
Survivors: Faces of Life After the Holocaust is a photo portfolio by Martin Schoeller, who “felt that it was his professional and personal responsibility to not only reflect on and learn from the Holocaust, but to help memorialize it” with these unflinching portraits of survivors.
IN THEIR OWN WORDS
Echoes of Memory is an ongoing collection of survivor reflections and testimonies from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. The remembrances are varied and poignant, well worth reading—and sharing.
...and a Few More Links
Renovated museum celebrates New Orleans' Italian history; Sicilian visitors can also learn about their own personal history.
Using cutting edge technology to recover an audio treasure
Maia Fischler of Life Writer Personal Histories in Oregon celebrates a recent autobiography completion.
Residents of a senior living community in Minnesota have released their third book of personal histories, Distinctly I Remember: More Stories We Love to Tell.
Tips on archival preservation of your papers and mementos
How Phillip Lim learned to cook by following his nose back to the fragrant dishes of his childhood.
Helping young kids create a grandparent journal
Short Takes
Life Story Links: January 21, 2020
For those who value memoir and life story writing, here are some recent recommended reads on leaving lasting legacies, and discovering our stories as we go.
“What is truer than truth? The story.”
—Hasidic proverb
Luke Weldon, small farmer, and his son using an ancient Buick (transformed by cutting down the chassis) as an improvised tractor in New Bridgeton, New Jersey, 1936. The automobile was bought in a second-hand car lot for a cost of fifteen dollars. Photograph by Edwin Rosskam, courtesy Library of Congress.
Discovering Our Stories as We Go
PEN TO PAPER
“I didn’t know when I started to write a memoir my handwriting would unlock the story only I can tell,” Gita Brown says. “Using my hands and a pen, there is no delete key and no option to erase an idea before it starts.”
WRITING AS DISCOVERY
“You can write to a scripted conclusion, and it will be easier. Maybe no one will even notice. But why on earth would you?” Jennifer McGaha on putting pen to paper without a destination in mind and getting to the story behind the scenes.
MIDDLE CHILD
“I’ve known all my life that their story isn’t mine to tell, but that doesn’t stop me from visiting it like the ruins of a dead civilization...” Natalia Rachel Singer entwines the fragments of her parents' story with her own in this poignant brief first-person piece.
SHIFTING TENSES
“Implicit, procedural memories pose less of a problem for me than facts, concepts, names, and dates. Those automatic how-tos live in my fingertips and tongue,” Clare Nauman writes in this exquisite exploration of the overlapping past, present, and future of a survivor of abuse.
WHAT IT’S ALL ABOUT
“‘My story is about me.’ Not if you want anyone to read it, it’s not. It’s not about you. You’re there. You’re present. We could not do this without you. But you are not what the story is about.” Marion Roach Smith on finding your universal theme (the comments on this piece, by the way, are worth a read, too).
Lasting Legacies
HISTORY, PERSONAL AND GLOBAL
A brave group of Jews secretly chronicled their daily existence in the Warsaw Ghetto during the Holocaust. Only one who knew where the archive was buried survived.
SOMETHING OF LASTING IMPORTANCE
A memoir recently ushered into the world by personal historian Pat Pihl includes a woman’s recollection of her time at a tuberculosis hospital in Southwestern New York State and her family’s turbulent years during the Great Depression.
“NOT JOSEPHINE, JUST JO”
“Now that my parents have both passed away, I’ve had faint pulls of longing for the name they chose for me. What does it mean when we untether ourselves from one of the first manifestations of our parents’ love?” Allison Gilbert, author of Passed and Present, on the significance of changing her given name.
IN HINDSIGHT
“Like most of us, Carl Gustin realized too late that he had missed the opportunity to hear his father's life story. He’d do anything to go back and have just one more day with his dad,” says Michigan–based personal historian Lauren Befus.
...and a Few More Links
White House photographer David Kennerly to keynote RootsTech 2020.
How to keep a travel journal
A genealogical look at Irish wedding traditions and customs
Author recognizes need to pass down family recipes in new cookbook.
Congratulations to Lauren Befus, personal historian in Grand Rapids, Michigan, for being featured on her local FOX TV news.
Short Takes
“The most important unknown story of the Holocaust”
A brave group of Jews secretly chronicled their daily existence in the Warsaw Ghetto during the Holocaust. Only one who knew where the archive was buried survived.
“The life of every Jew during this war is a world unto itself.”
So wrote historian Dr. Emanuel Ringelblum, founder of the Oyneg Shabes, an archive of documents and writings created clandestinely by Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto from 1940–1943 and considered to be the most important cache of eyewitness accounts of the Holocaust to survive the war.
Led by Ringelblum, a group of journalists, scholars, and community leaders in the Warsaw Ghetto vowed to defeat Nazi lies and propaganda not with guns or fists but with pen and paper. By recounting their experiences as they happened, from their perspective as Jews during World War II, these courageous souls were both bearing witness to themselves and risking their lives.
“I do not know who of our group will survive…but one thing is clear to all of us. Our toils and tribulations, our devotion and constant terror have not been in vain,” Ringelblum wrote.
As trains deported them to the gas chambers of Treblinka and the Ghetto burned to the ground, members of the Oyneg Shabes buried 60,000 pages of documentation in the hopes that the archive would survive the war, even if they did not, according to the film Who Will Write Our History, a feature documentary that tells the story of the archive and those who created it.
Of the approximately sixty individuals involved in creating the archive, only three survived; and only one of those three individuals knew where it was buried.
Film director Roberta Grossman declares the efforts of the Oyneg Shabes archivists to “scream the truth to the world” to be “the most important unknown story of the Holocaust.”
The feature documentary Who Will Write Our History blends archival and dramatic footage. “The thrust of the effort was to make the film as authentic as possible,” said filmmaker Roberta Grossman during a post-screening panel at the 92nd Street Y on November 19, 2019. “The overarching goal was to give the film the gravitas of documentary with great scholars like Sam [Kassow] and then to have the emotional pull of a dramatic feature.”
“Who Will Write Our History?”
On November 19 I attended a screening of Who Will Write Our History, a documentary I first read about more than a year ago. In the two days since, my mind—and heart—have been whirling with emotions and thoughts.
As a personal historian, I was heartened by the power of contemporaneous storytelling and the value of each and every person’s experiences.
As a woman, I was inspired by writer Rachel Auerbach, who dedicated her life to the documentation of and research into the Holocaust.
As a creator, I was empowered by filmmaker Roberta Grossman, whose seven-year journey to make this documentary was spurred on by “a sense of personal responsibility to tell a story that would otherwise remain untold.”
As a human, I am humbled and grateful to Dr. Ringelblum and his cohorts for remaining in the Ghetto with the express purpose of documenting the reality of life under Nazi occupation. “We can’t all run away,” he wrote.
The Oyneg Shabes “was one great act of accusation,” historian David Roskies says in the film.
Photo by Anna Wloch, courtesy of Who Will Write Our History.
Here, I share some quotes that moved me, and implore you all to see this film.
As Grossman remarked upon reading Samuel Kassow’s Who Will Write Our History? Rediscovering a Hidden Archive From the Warsaw Ghetto, the book which inspired her film: “I had spent my life voraciously reading about the Holocaust. How was it possible that the equivalent of the Dead Sea Scrolls rising from the rubble of the Ghetto had remained largely unknown outside of academic circles?” Indeed.
Indeed.
Further reading
See the film Who Will Write Our History.
Watch a video of the post-screening panel at the 92nd Street Y with filmmaker Roberta Grossman, producer Nancy Spielberg, and historian and author Samuel Kassow, with CNN journalist Dana Bash moderating.
The filmmakers have released an educational version of the documentary appropriate for younger audiences, along with a rich array of teaching resources—which, I might add, are wonderful for anyone interested in the film, not just students: Check out the guided questions and handouts for watching the film, as well as activities for dealing with the idea of “Countering the Single Story.”
Explore the Ringelblum Archive via Yad Vashem.
Life Story Links: January 6, 2020
The healing value of storytelling, how memories may be magnified during holidays, plus more delicious food memories and time travel, family history–style.
“This packrat has learned that what the next generation will value most is not what we owned but the evidence of who we were and the tales of how we loved. In the end, it's the family stories that are worth the storage.”
—Ellen Goodman
“My mother Hilary, aunts Kay and Peggie, and my grandmother Hilda. In those days people dressed up for outings!” wrote Richard Bridgland of this photograph taken at Stonehenge in 1932. Photo courtesy of Richard Bridgland/English Heritage. Read about an exhibition of family photos taken at the Stonehenge, below.
On the Menu: Memories
THE STORY OF A FAMILY, THROUGH FOOD
“My heritage lives in my stomach,” Catherine Lanser writes in “Instructions to the Past,” an ode to two slim, spiral-bound recipe books she inherited from her mother.
“AND THEN, I BAKE.”
Although she can find instructions for any holiday cookie online, Chicago writer Donna Vickroy prefers to pull out her mother’s handwritten—threadbare, dough-stained—recipes each Christmas. “Often, as I’m mixing, I tear up knowing that she was thinking of me when she grabbed pen and paper to write down these very words—butter, flour, enjoy.”
FOOD RITUAL & RECONNECTING
Sharing a family meal can help those with dementia connect. “A good meal made with love can draw out a person with dementia and bring them real joy…even if they've completely gotten to the point where they may not have that connection to the family story."
AN OVER-THE-TOP FOODIE HOLIDAY
Personal historian Sarah White remembers being a newcomer to her husband-to-be’s annual Christmas Eve feast—where family, friends, antipasti, and desserts proliferated amidst the Venetian splendor of his relative’s “Jungle Room.” Bonus: Auntie Mary’s grustali recipe.
It’s in the Telling
THE NAKED TRUTH
“Truth in life doesn’t automatically morph into truth on the page. And living people don’t necessarily come to life in print. It takes creativity—hence the term “creative non-fiction.”” Blake Morrison on how to write a memoir.
YOURS TO TELL
“A story can only be a story if it is told.” College sophomore Trinity Bland shares compelling reasons why her fellow students at San Diego State University should in fact share their personal stories.
CALLED TO SERVICE
“There are fascinating stories all around us, if only we ask,” prompts Maryland–based personal historian Pat McNess, and here she asks a lifelong friend about his time in the Navy.
HEALING EXCHANGES
“We play an integral role in saving history and recognizing the healing power of having one’s story recorded,” Wisconsin–based personal historian Mary Voell writes in this piece about the healing benefits of storytelling.
THE HOSPICE HEART
“Being present for and receiving a life story is one of the great gifts of [hospice] work,” writes Gabrielle Elise Jimenez. “When we are witnesses with presence and clarity...these snapshots and stories become gifts to us and create opportunities for healing...”
Time Travel,Family History–Style
STONEHENGE SNAPSHOTS
The oldest known family photo of Stonehenge dates to 1875, and can be seen on display with other pictures of the ancient stone circle in England, like the one above, at the visitor center through August 2020. If you have one to add to the collection, or would just like to browse the fun photos, click here.
‘THE SURVIVORS’
“Going back through my family’s history has deepened my awe for my grandparents and has given me a broader, more complex understanding of their experience...and the obligation that falls on each of us to uphold that heritage going forward.” On inherited trauma, and writing memoir.
Ringing in 2020
A JOY-FILLED COMMUNION
On the Eve of the December holidays I wrote about how the season can be difficult for those of us missing a loved one—but truly, this message is an ever-green one: Remembering our lost loved ones—out loud, with others who knew them—is a balm to the soul.
THE GIFT OF LEGACY
Tell someone, unequivocally, that they matter to you: By gifting them a chance to tell their stories, to preserve their past, to be heard and validated, you are letting them know that they matter—that they will be remembered.
NEW YEAR, NEW MEMORIES
Two resolutions guaranteed to bring joy to you and others—no low-carb diets or Fitbit tracking in sight!
RETROMANIA
“Every corner of social media seems to be using nostalgia to emotionally manipulate us, beaming us something warm and fuzzy on a cold, shiny screen.” Do we have a nostalgia fixation?
...and a Few More Links
Auschwitz survivor wonders: Was she the reason he was alive today?
Personal historian Gloria Nussbaum interviewed for Northwest50Plus magazine.
Google Photos launches private photo messenger.
Using Snapchat and Instagram as self-curated memory books
Scanner recommendations for digitizing old family photos
Short Takes
Life Story Links: December 4, 2019
A smattering of pieces on the distance between memoir and history, the importance of memories, storytelling as an act of restoration, plus unique gift ideas.
“The turning leaves of fall remind us how much beauty wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for the life and death of each season that came before. This lesson in wholeness entreats us to pursue the whole picture of who we were made to be, to live in the abundance of our own story, and to know that each piece—the broken, the sad, the hard, just as much as the fulfilled, the good, the happy—plays into reaping the harvest of who we are.”
—Joanna Gaines
First Person Voice
TINY LOVE STORIES
In “From Romantic Tragedy to Romantic Comedy” readers share personal anecdotes of love in no more than 100 words—proof than emotion and story can indeed be conveyed meaningfully and succinctly.
WRITING OTHERS INTO BEING
Sema Kaygusuz’s grandmother “constantly talked about her impoverished childhood, about the older sister she lost at a young age, about the many djinns, spirits and beings from the other world whom she saw in her dreams,” yet she was silent about the trauma she witnessed in Turkey in 1938. Why?
MAKING HISTORY
“Despite their messiness, obscurity and fictions, individual lives are the stitches of the past.” At what point does memoir become biography and biography become history?
Bits & Pieces
WRAPPED IN MEMORIES
Last week I shared five fabulous gift ideas for any sentimental adults in your life, and I do believe each one is more unexpected than the next! Will you be putting any on your own wish list...?
THE ANONYMOUS PROJECT
“Storytelling can be yet another act of restoration.” On imagining the stories behind old photographs and slides gathered into a collection, sans context or captions.
...and a Few More Links
Inspired by Monticello’s Getting Word project, students launch UVA oral history project.
How people in the UK are preserving history for future generations with life stories
The Survivors: A Story of War, Inheritance, and Healing—a story where no one is exactly who they seem.
Twitter's plans to start deleting inactive accounts prompts digital legacy concerns.
Short Takes
Life Story Links: November 19, 2019
A wealth of personal history news, from immigrant memoirs to Thanksgiving story sharing, from archives of the past to the value of writing and remembering.
How
Do I
Listen to others?
As if everyone were my Master
Speaking to me
His
Cherished
Last
Words.
—Hafiz, “How Do I Listen”
In the kitchen, Hightstown, New Jersey, 1938. Photographed by Dorothea Lange, Russell Lee, Carl Mydans, Arthur Rothstein for the Farm Security Administration. Photo courtesy Library of Congress.
Pass the Gravy, Tell a Tale
#THEGREATLISTEN 2019
Since 2015 when The Great Thanksgiving Listen was launched, thousands of Americans have recorded 100,000+ interviews, providing families with a priceless record of a loved one’s story for future generations to listen to and learn from. StoryCorps offers resources to help individuals and educators transform the holidays into a time of intergenerational sharing.
FOOD MEMORIES, PRESERVED
Launched in time for Thanksgiving host(ess) gift giving, these recipe card sets encourage families to record not only the ingredients and prep instructions for their favorite foods, but the stories behind them, as well.
A Case for Storytelling
GETTING RELATIVES TALKING
In “We’re Losing Generations of Family History Because We Don’t Share Our Stories,” California–based ghostwriter Rachael Rifkin shares her expertise for how to get kids, siblings, and parents talking.
FAMILY LORE
“Telling family stories about crazy Uncle Joe or other eccentric relatives is a favorite pastime when families gather for the holidays. But will squirming children or Instagram-obsessed teens bother to listen?” Yes, says research—and the impact is undeniably positive.
WRITING TO COPE
In The Lost Kitchen, an Alzheimer’s caregiver, Miriam Green, preserves memories of her mother through recipes and reflections. Green turned to writing, including recording family recipes, as a coping mechanism, and learned to enjoy “the present moments spent together.”
Preserving the Past, Uniquely
AN ARCHIVE OF CURIOSITIES & WONDERS
The Public Domain Review is “rocketing the oddities of the past into the present,” including galleries of historical artifacts and images as well as essays putting the various bits of ephemera it spotlights into context. A new book of collected essays is available for pre-order, too.
SAFEGUARDING FRAGILE MEMORY
In anticipation of seeing a screening of Who Will Write Our History at the 92nd Street Y tonight, I began reading up on the film and discovered a most unique historical treasure trove: UNESCO’s “Memory of the World,” which aims to preserve the documentary heritage of the world as a symbol of the collective memory of humanity (the 60,000 pages of eyewitness documentation of the Holocaust known as the Oyneg Shabes, on which the aforementioned film was based, is part of UNESCO’s archive).
HEIRLOOM ARTS
Portland–based personal historian Lisa Kagan announces a winter art workshop for women to “explore what resilience and renewal mean to you in the context of your personal journey.”
Recommended First Person Reads
MINE EYES HAVE SEEN…
“I started to wonder if I could ever give language to my grandmother’s memories across the generations between us. I began to doubt whether I could make my words bring to life all that she has seen, when I have never seen these things with my own eyes,” Julie Moon writes in this legacy-seeking piece.
FIRST IMPRESSIONS
Deirdre Bair, Samuel Beckett's biographer of record, recalls her first (long-delayed) meeting with the notoriously private author in this essay that makes me want to know more about their professional relationship over the next seven years; guess I’ll be checking out her latest book, Parisian Lives, which promises to “reveal secrets of the biographical art.” Listen to a brief excerpt from the audio book here:
ARTISAN OF WORDS
“We weave narratives as we weave cloth, and our words for them are bound together: text and textile share the same Latin root, textus, ‘that which is woven’,” Esther Rutter writes in “Making.”
...and a Few More Links
Eight inspiring immigrant memoirs from Celadon Books
California Camp Fire remembrance book shares “unified experience” of community.
Story Terrace relives their favorite revelations from TV’s Who Do You Think You Are?.
A family, a house, a city: The Yellow House, Sarah Broom’s memoir of New Orleans
Lest We Forget: Keep Their Stories Alive preserves WWI treasures and memories for a British digital archive.
Holocaust survivor and Oscar-winning producer of Schindler’s List dies at 87
Short Takes