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Life Story Links: June 30, 2020
Lots about letters (the old-fashioned kind—handwritten & stamped), plus the future of family history, communicating with our elders, and mini first-person reads.
“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
Vintage postcard of a beach scene of the past (social distancing was clearly not SOP of the day!). “Beach Scene Along Woodland Beach, Staten Island, N.Y.” Courtesy Irma and Paul Milstein Division of United States History, Local History and Genealogy, The New York Public Library.
Our Lives, Our Stories
WHAT TESTIMONY CARRIES
“There were these families around the world where my grandmother’s survival had essentially become folklore in their families, the way that her survival had become folklore in my life,” says Rachael Cerrotti, co-producer of the arresting podcast We Share the Same Sky, in this exploration of “The Power of Testimony in a Digital Age” from USC Shoah Foundation.
OUT OF THE CLOSET
Hey memories—come out, come out, wherever you are! Last week I wrote about how to use family photos, heirlooms, and the "stuff" of your past to elicit memories and chronicle the stories of your life.
GENEALOGICAL TREASURE TROVE
“A funeral is, among many highly emotional things, an opportunity to consecrate someone’s life as historical fact, and to commit that truth to the public record.” A new archive digitizes more than a century of Black American funeral programs, including lives lived from before the Civil War to today.
“INDEPENDENT LIVING”
“On March 15, the assisted living facility where my mother lives went into lockdown to attempt to prevent the spread of Covid-19,” writes personal historian Sarah White, who describes herself as a member of a cohort of daughters who are lifelines to the world for these elders. “For nearly everyone, that lifeline was severed that day in March. I am still allowed in: What I see is breaking my heart.”
THE FUTURE OF FAMILY HISTORY
From an article in the latest issue of the New York Researcher: “A fundamental shift from collecting names and dates to gathering stories over the past decade appears to be here to stay…” Indeed.
In Letters
THE AGE OF PROPER CORRESPONDENCE
“Each day when the mail carrier arrives, I find myself longing for a surprise letter—a big, juicy one,” Dwight Garner writes. “I do trade big, juicy emails with some people in my life, but receiving them isn’t quite the same as slitting open a letter, taking it to a big chair and settling in for the 20 minutes it takes to devour it.”
“I THOUGHT I KNEW THEM”
How much does anyone ever know about the experiences that shaped our parents? As Nancy Barnes rummages through letters her parents wrote to one another in the earliest years of their courtship, she ponders this. “My mother’s handwriting is bold and loopy, almost wild—quite unlike the neat orderly hand I knew all my life.”
AN ENCHANTING ENCOUNTER
“Sometimes I take out your letters & verses, dear friend, and...rejoice in the rare sparkles of light,” Thomas Wentworth Higginson wrote to Emily Dickinson. This book excerpt captures their first face-to-face meeting after eight years of letter writing.
...and a Few More Links
Australian storytelling project helps participants re-imagine their past and invent new ways to see their stories.
Personal Historians NW group has recorded an estimated 500 “slices of life” among them.
Short Takes
Life Story Links: June 16, 2020
Our things hold stories, our stories hold meaning, and black stories matter as much as ever; plus pieces on how to plan a life story book & write a legacy letter.
“There are years that ask questions and years that answer.”
—Zora Neale Hurston
Civil rights marchers carrying banner reading “We March with Selma” lead the way as 15,000 parade in Harlem, March 1965. Photograph by Stanley Wolfson for World Telegram & Sun, courtesy Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.
The Thing about Our Things
TREASURE IN THE ATTIC
Sheltering in place has given some families extra time to explore long forgotten spaces in their homes—as well as the proximate family history. “Every time we find something I get to hear so many stories. I haven’t been recording them, but I should.”
DISCOVERING HERITAGE THROUGH FAMILY PHOTOS
“My grandmother explained to me the stories behind each photo, from the people in it to what was going on in the world the day it was taken. I wasn’t sure what I was more impressed with: how sharp her memory was or how well she had managed to keep so many photos from the past organized.”
LISTEN IN
“Sharing the story of the ‘things’ in our lives can help us share the past with our family,” Maureen Taylor says in her introduction to a podcast episode with guest Martie McNabb, founder of Show and Tales. My favorite thing she talks about: the difference between storytelling and “story sharing.”
Expert Tips
THREE-STEP PLAN
It’s not a simple thing to undertake a life story project, but it needn’t be overly complicated, either. Last week I shared three steps to make your life story book project proceed as efficiently and smoothly as possible.
LIFE LESSONS
A legacy letter, also known as an ethical will, is “a way to soul-search what I want the rest of my footprint to look like. What do I stand for?”
Black Stories Matter
#SHAREBLACKSTORIES
“It wasn’t until the beginning of high school that my dad started opening up to me about his experience as a black man living in America,” Rylee shares on Instagram, which is proving to be a force for sharing Black stories right now.
BLACK MOTHERHOOD IN SLEEPLESS TIMES
“As he sleeps his mouth moves as if he is still nursing, still tethered to me. I look at his perfect face, watch his mouth dance, and try not to think this is the safest he will ever be,” Idrissa Simmonds-Nastili writes in this powerful piece on (so much more than) sleep-training her baby.
STORY SNIPPET
“Dad, why do you take me to protests so much?” Two minutes and thirty-nine seconds of love and respect and conversation between a father and son in Mississippi:
ONE VOICE
“The most damaging day came when my son, at 11 years of age, had his drone picked up by a gust of wind, and deposited into the fenced back yard of a neighbor down the street,” Heather Stewman writes in this personal story of encountering racism in everyday life.
WITNESSES TO HISTORY
”Black photographers have been documenting the nationwide protests in a way that amounts to telling ‘our own history in real time,’ said Brooklyn, N.Y.-based commercial photographer Mark Clennon, ‘because our parents, and grandparents never really had a chance to have their voices heard.’”
Photograph by Alexis Hunley of a parent and child sharing a tender moment during a protest against police brutality in Los Angeles on June 6. NPR shares a series of impactful photographs from eight black photographers along with commentary on their experiences. (Click photo or link above to read full story.)
HISTORICAL TRAUMA
“[An] individual’s parents or grandparents may have stories about how their own relatives survived the Jim Crow era, narratives that were marked by terror and fear of the white community.” Mirel Zaman explains inherited trauma.
Dose of Inspiration
“REMEMBER YOU ARE ALL PEOPLE AND ALL PEOPLE ARE YOU”
“Remember the sky that you were born under, / know each of the star’s stories…” A friend recently shared with me this 1983 poem, “Remember” by poet laureate Joy Harjo, and I want to share it with you—it feels oh-so-right for this season.
TOO MUCH MEMORY, OR NOT ENOUGH?
“At first, my desire to remember was formidable, but ultimately harmless… I had lost what I loved and with each detail I unearthed, I felt like I was regaining it,” Angela Rose Brussel writes in this meditation on grieving in the digital afterlife.
...and a Few More Links
Zadie Smith wrote an entire essay collection in lockdown.
Court records “provide amazing window into past”
Is Ball Four the greatest baseball memoir ever written?
Short Takes
Life Story Links: June 2, 2020
Unique memory preservation methods including illustrated maps, birthday tributes & travel scrapbooks; plus memoir writing now, and a vintage Mary Karr interview.
“The people we most love do become a physical part of us, ingrained in our synapses, in the pathways where memories are created.”
—Meghan O’Rourke
Returning to Camp after a day’s fishing, Maine. Photograph courtesy The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs: Photography Collection, The New York Public Library. (1898 - 1931).
All Ways of Remembering
TAKING CARE OF TRAVEL MEMORIES
“There’s no wrong way to scrapbook, and there needn’t be any rhyme or reason, aside from what resonates with you. Whether the order is chronological or geographical, the captions hyper-specific or non-existent, the finished product is unavoidably sentimental, a reflection of the way you lived while walking (or biking, or dog-sledding) out into the world.”
BIRTHDAY LOVE
When you want to cap off a milestone birthday party with a most meaningful gift, consider an heirloom birthday tribute book oozing with love and memories. Why tribute books are so popular right now.
A COLORFUL APPROACH
An illustrated map “can be a beautiful and highly personal reflection of a place you, friends and family know quite well. It can tell a story, a personal history, or be a unique lens through which one can experience a special place.”
DISPATCHES FROM THE BASEMENT
“Dad, I just want to say, thank you for helping get rid of this virus.” In this remote video, a son thanks his father, a doctor who has been isolating from his wife and four children to shield them from exposure to Covid-19:
Write It Out
WRITING YOUR HISTORY IN REAL TIME
“Sure, today’s youth may know that Jackie Robinson was the first African American to play in the MLB. But did they know that their grandfather got a black eye from a schoolyard fight when a classmate argued that ‘[African Americans] shouldn’t play baseball?’ That makes it real.” Virginia–based personal historian Karen Bender makes a case for keeping a Covid diary.
AN OLDIE BUT A GOODIE
“This is a simply stunning interview of Mary Karr from 2009,” Tim Ferriss writes. “I’ve read it multiple times, highlighted nearly every page, and saved my scans to Evernote. That’s how much goodness I think it contains. It’s also laugh-out-loud funny.”
PATCHWORK
“I wrote most of the essays as individual pieces so then it was the work of figuring out how they spoke to one another. I wanted to be aware of overlaps and gaps in the memoir arc, the narrative and consciously choose how I addressed them.” Sejal Shah on giving shape to her essay collection.
...and a Few More Links
How will we remember the pandemic? Museums are already deciding.
Anthony Bailey, memoirist and biographer of artists, died at 87.
Escape to the past with stories of NYC of old—including, perhaps, your own.
Michigan–based video biographers think now, “in the time of coronavirus,” is the perfect time to preserve your stories.
Short Takes
Life Story Links: May 19, 2020
For life story preservationists both professional & aspirational: actionable tips, inspirational biographical reads, memoir workshops, and video recommendations.
“Questions are open doors. They move you away from the stagnation of certainty into the openness of wonder.”
—Laraine Herring
As the school year comes to a close, this year in our homes, I am missing the sounds and sight of kids running around the school yard—hence the choice of this week’s vintage photo: Girls on playground, Harriet Island, St. Paul, Minnesota, 1905. Photograph courtesy Detroit Publishing Co., Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C.
Actionable Tips
FROM A DISTANCE
California-based personal historian Rachael Rifkin writes about how to interview family members while social distancing, via Family Tree magazine.
HONORING THE DECEASED
After helping many individuals gather memories and express their love for a family member who has passed away, I have gathered my top eight tips for creating your own tribute book in honor of a lost loved one.
‘EVENTUALLY’ IS HERE
“I’ve spent years collecting intimate interviews. Take it from me: A conversation about life’s big questions is the very definition of time well spent.” StoryCorps founder Dave Issay expresses what all us personal historians know: Now is (always) the time to ask your loved ones about their lives.
On Screens Now
THE ASIAN AMERICAN STORY
The PBS documentary series Asian Americans, which weaves the stories and images of real people…into the tapestry of history, “deserves attention for bringing under-appreciated history to life through the stories of Americans whose ancestral roots reach across the Pacific Ocean to the 48 countries of Asia,” says this review.
DIGITAL MUSEUM EXHIBIT
“Beyond Statistics: Living in a Pandemic” traces the stories of five former residents of The Tenement Museum’s buildings who lived with, and ultimately died from, contagious disease during three different eras. The digital exhibit uses visual storytelling, including an interactive timeline, to engage and add to the narratives.
REWIND
From PBS Independent Lens: “Made up of home video footage that reveals a long-kept secret, Sasha Joseph Neulinger’s Rewind is a brave and wrenching look at his childhood and his journey to reconcile his past. By probing the gap between image and reality, the film depicts both how little and how much a camera can capture.” Read a review here, and stream the documentary here. Trailer:
Writing Memoir & Life Stories
ARE YOU A DIY MEMOIRIST?
“You don’t need to have won the Nobel prize or invented sliced bread for your life to be worth recording,” writes Philadelpia–based personal historian Clemence Scouten. Here she helps you decide: Should you write your memoirs yourself or hire a service?
VIRTUAL MEMOIR WORKSHOPS, FROM A MASTER
Beth Kephart, award-winning memoirist and author of one of my favorite craft books, Handling the Truth, has announced that her Juncture Workshop Series will be going virtual. The monthly classes, which begin in June 2020, will offer “memoir writers and truth seekers original insights into craft and best-of literature, guided tours of the self, a chance to get percolating questions answered, and manuscript critiques.”
NO PLOTTING—FOR NOW
“The heart of your memoir—what it’s really about, and what will guide its shape—is best found by letting yourself suss out the emotional hot spots in memory and record the details before you define a story line,” Lisa Dale Norton writes in this piece about why it can be hampering to write a memoir outline too soon in your process.
First Person Reads & Short Biographical Writing
FROM HER PERSONAL REPERTOIRE
“When we have the ‘pandemic blues,’ it helps to reminisce about a tough time and how we got through,” writes Wisconsin–based personal historian Sarah White. A random comment on a trip long ago became her touchstone for resilience: “Cobblestones” tells the story of that moment.
THE TRANSFORMATION ARTIST
As part of their “Remarkable Lives” series of autobiographical posts, NYC’s Remarkable Life Memoirs turns the spotlight on a budding entrepreneur who tells her story of taking something disposable and transforming it into something beautiful, right in the middle of a pandemic hotspot.
RESILIENT ROOTS
“I remember my mother interviewing Nama for [her] history on her porch when I was about eight years old. I was mesmerized with Nama’s storytelling and the amazing life she had. But I never saw the depth of what she went through until recently.” Genealogist Janet Hovorka reads her great-grandmother’s personal history anew, with adult eyes.
“HISTORY FOUND YOU”
A graduation speech for the 2020 college grads who aren’t able to experience the milestone with all the pomp and circumstance it deserves, with reflections on the past, the present, and the bright future of this tested generation.
THE STONE COLLECTOR
Meet the stone collector of Iceland’s eastern coast: A. Kendra Greene gathers the history of a life. This lyrical read of an unexpected slice of life drew me in slowly, and made me want for more.
...and a Few More Links
Alcove: a virtual reality platform focused on family connection
How the thinnest paper in the world is used in historical conservation
What historians will see when they look back on the Covid-19 pandemic of 2020
Want to share a family immigration story with the Ellis Island Foundation?
“Diary of Our DNA”: How her mother’s photo albums evolved into a family history book
Chatbooks is giving a year of free photo books to babies born during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Moving photo portfolio: A day in the life of a Covid-19 I.C.U nurse
The “fabulous, forgotten life” of Vita Sackville-West
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: April 21, 2020
Hybrid memoir, journalistic memoir, and writing about estranged family members; plus timely storytelling and oral history resources and Mother's Day ideas.
“We’re all products of our context in time and place.”
—Linda Joy Myers
Front line workers were heroes during the flu epidemic of 1918, as they are now during the novel coronavirus pandemic. Photograph: St. Louis Red Cross Motor Corps on duty during influenza epidemic (1918). Original from Library of Congress; digitally enhanced by Rawpixel.
Writing Our Lives
HYBRID MEMOIR, EXAMINED
In her essay “What Are the Boundaries of a Memoir?” Beth Kephart uses new books by Mark Doty and Paul Lisicky to look at “the hybrid memoir—these books that spring from the wells of the curious self, that dissolve the borders between the writer and the world, that operate somewhere between the lyric braid and the collage.”
THE MISSING
“It’s not my uncle’s absence that haunts me—after all, I never knew him. It’s that no one—not my grandparents, my parents, or any of my mother’s cousins we visited with over the years—told me stories about him, or about losing him.” Joanna Hershon on those missing from the figurative family tree.
ON WRITING ABOUT FAMILY
In a thoughtful conversation that talks about excavating family history and approaching memoir as a journalist, Sopan Deb describes his work as “a portrait of a broken immigrant family and my attempt to put it back together the best I can.”
Timely Resources
DEDICATED PASSENGER SEARCH SESSIONS
With a $30 donation to the Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation, a researcher from their American Family Immigration History Center will uncover your family’s connection to Ellis Island in a personalized 30-minute research session. Successful searches will receive a free digital copy of the ship manifest displaying your ancestor’s arrival in America and, when the Foundation’s office reopens, a free copy on archival paper by mail.
CORONAVIRUS JOURNALING
The New York Times offers up tips for starting your very own coronavirus diary, while North Carolina–based The Cheerful Word delivers this free download with 100 writing prompts for these extraordinary times.
FOOD MEMORIES FOREVER
With so many of us spending more time in our kitchens these days, why not take time to write down the recipes that mean something to us—along with the stories behind them? Check out this free printable for a personalized recipe book from The Storied Recipe; and my custom set of food memory cards (I mailed a few cards to each family member with a handwritten note asking them to record their favorites).
Ah, Stories!
UNEXPECTED SOULMATES
I always tell my clients that longer doesn’t mean better when it comes to storytelling, and I think this three-minute animated tale of love nurtured from afar is proof of that concept:
Mother’s Day Tributes
HONORING MOMS
Now more than ever, the gifts of listening and connection are meaningful things we can give to those we love. Here, I offer up four ideas that fit the bill for Mother’s Day giving.
WORLD MOTHER LIVE 2020
The World Mother Storytelling Project is a far-reaching global initiative that teaches us to listen to and tell our mothers’ stories. Murray Nossel, co-creator of the Narativ listening and storytelling method, will host the free event, which will be live-streamed from Town Hall in NYC on May 10, 4-6pm. Apply here to be an event storyteller.
...and a Few More Links
“What to do when your parents give you junk from your past.”
Free download: 56 Essential Family History Questions to Ask Your Parents and Grandparents
Passenger search tips and tricks from the Ellis Island Database (video)
Life Story Links: April 7, 2020
Lots of advice for preserving personal history during the coronavirus pandemic, plus recommended videos & tips for capturing family stories and writing memoir.
“One voice has the power to forge connections and create a better, more empathetic world.”
—Dr. William Lynn Weaver, StoryCorps participant
In this time of sheltering-in-place and extreme social distancing, maintaining connections by good old-fashioned telephone calls is one way to go. Photograph of American Telephone & Telegraph Exhibit at New York’s World Fair, 1939, courtesy Manuscripts and Archives Division, The New York Public Library Digital Collections.
In the Time of Covid-19
THE QUARANTINE DIARIES
“What makes history is people who write some stuff or keep some pictures,” Mr. Herron said. “This is how we communicate across centuries.”
PERSONAL HISTORY QUESTIONS
I created this guide, 56 Essential Questions to Ask Your Parents Before It’s Too Late, in hopes that more people will use their housebound time to forge meaningful connections with their older loved ones.
ACTIVITIES FOR ALL AGES
Family Search has compiled myriad in-home and online family history activities for families to do together “designed to bridge the distance between loved ones.”
ASKING QUESTIONS
This pandemic is the time to preserve your family’s stories, writes Ellie Kahn, a personal historian in the Los Angeles area. And Arizona–based Olive Lowe of Life Stories by Liv offers four easy steps to use Google Voice to record those story-sharing conversations.
‘RAPID RESPONSE COLLECTING’
“As a historian, you’re always thinking about what’s missing, of what you want to know more about. I think what people will want to know about this crazy time is what everyday life was like, what it was like to live through.” Museums scramble to document the pandemic, even as it unfolds.
FROM AN ARCHIVIST’S PERSPECTIVE
Hat-tip to New York–based archivist Margot Note for highlighting the following articles in her always informative newsletter:
“Write it Down”: Historian Suggests Keeping a Record of Life During Pandemic
Presentation: Archiving COVID-19: A Guide
Consider joining Margot’s Facebook community for news of upcoming webinars (she recently hosted the popular “Close Together/Far Apart: Creating Family Archives While Social Distancing,” for example).
Ah, Memories
IN PICTURES
“Photo albums make me think of family: the big, bulky leather-bound behemoths that Mum whips out at Christmas. They’re time portals I can peer through to see my dad looking like Morrissey in the ’80s,” Meg Watson writes. “Making one for myself was a totally new, and surprisingly emotional, experience.”
ADOPTION JOURNEY BOOK
For adoptive parents interested in preserving memories of their journey, here is a road map for what to save, how to record memories, and when to begin compiling everything into a book.
HOME & AWAY
In her new memoir, Always Home, Fanny Singer writes about her “uniquely delicious childhood” as daughter of food icon Alice Waters. Now she ponders the future of her mother’s restaurant, Chez Panisse, and “what can make us feel grounded and sane…at a time so pregnant with precarity.”
Watch List
TIME TO LEARN
The free video archive of 2020 RootsTech sessions includes discussions about copyright, DNA, genealogy research techniques, and tackling difficult chapters of our family history.
THE WRITER’S LIFE
“I had no idea when I taped this…class that it would be released during a time where we’re living in a great deal of isolation and searching for ways to grow, witness, help, find peace within the chaos,” memoirist Dani Shapiro says. Watch “Writing for Inner Calm: A Mindset, Methods, and Daily Exercises for All” with a two-month Skillshare trial.
STREAMING TREASURES
The Library of Congress “has an extraordinary trove of online offerings—more than 7,000 videos—that includes hundreds of old (and really old) movies,” writes Manohla Dargis, among them this lyrical slice of life in 1948 New York City, “In the Street.”
A few other videos that might be of interest:
Survivors Testimony Films Series from Yad Vashem
And a 29-second advertisement with a message from Shaquille’s mom Lucille to “Preserve What’s Priceless”:
History Made Personal
REMEMBERING OUR SOLDIERS
A 41-year-old bricklayer from the Netherlands turned his childhood passion for World War II history into an act of remembrance lovingly tending the graves of Allied soldiers.
SALVAGING A MUSEUM’S ARTIFACTS
On Jan. 23, a fire gutted the upper floors of 70 Mulberry Street in Manhattan, where the Museum of Chinese in America’s collection was housed. Now, as workers sift through what survived, families are celebrating hundreds of boxes of heirlooms that were unloaded from the building’s scorched interior.
...and a Few More Links
Nick Flynn on making collages from found ephemera as “an atlas of my journey”
Invisible life lessons from war in a peacetime house
Review: The Memory Book: A Grief Journal for Children and Families
Rawpixel has curated a collection of vintage images of the Spanish Flu and historical medical images.
Short Takes
Life Story Links: March 17, 2020
This week's curated reading list includes a number of moving first-person reads, notes on the process and craft of personal history, plus keepsakes and photos.
“Sing your song. Dance your dance. Tell your tale.”
—Frank McCourt, Angela’s Ashes
Vintage St. Patrick’s Day postcard
Process & Craft
PEOPLE TALK
Editor Lisa Dale Norton on how to handle dialogue in your memoir writing (is it okay to invent what you haven’t recorded?).
“CHUNKING IT OUT”
There’s a lot of organization and structural editing that goes into crafting a narrative from a series of interview transcripts and a box of photos; I love Lauren Befus’s analogy of “piecing together a large puzzle” of our clients’ lives.”
TRIBAL & PERSONAL HISTORY, CONVERGED
“I don’t know how people write about real people,” Louise Erdrich said. “If you can’t find a direct quote of them saying what you want them to say, how do you put words in their mouth?” Her latest book, The Night Watchman, is a blend of truth and fiction, real people and real events plus a good dose of the imaginary.
FREE LEARNING OPPORTUNITY
Preservationist Margot Note teaches how to organize and preserve your family and personal legacy during a free webinar on Sunday, March 22 at 1pm.
Voices
THE EROS OF ESTRANGEMENT
In this adapted excerpt from Slouching Towards Los Angeles: Living and Writing by Joan Didion’s Light, Joshua Wolf Shenk explores specificity of place; dislocation and alienation; and what we do and don’t reveal in memoiristic writing.
ORIGIN STORY
FamilyScrybe contributor Taneya Y. Koonce’s musings on how interviewing her grandmothers and learning their stories helped shape her identity.
ANTHOLOGY: “WHY WE WRITE”
“The real reason that we're writing is to create opportunities for conversation and empathy and understanding and to have that present in the pages of this book,” says Randy Brown, a military veteran who gathered 61 authors to make a case for writing about war.
“A MEMOIR AND A RECKONING”
“This, I understood finally, was history: not the ordered narrative of books but an affliction that spread from parent to child, sister to brother, husband to wife.” Alex Halberstadt on writing a family memoir when your grandfather was Stalin’s bodyguard.
More Life Stories?
NO REGRETS?
A recent Wall Street Journal article reports that a growing number of adult children are interested in hearing more of their parents' stories. My thoughts on the so-called trend, and what we can do to ensure that such interest abides.
CHILDHOOD INFLUENCES
Who were your heroes when you were growing up? How did they make a difference in your life? Personal historian Carol McLaren of Arizona–based Unique Life Stories shares recollections of her childhood inspiration, Helen Keller.
The Stuff of the Past
PRECIOUS FAMILY RECIPES
The Internet keeps countless recipes in neat, tidy digital files, so handwritten notecards are quickly becoming cherished keepsakes. The folks at Martha Stewart have advice for how to best preserve them (and there are a lot more factors to consider than I imagined).
PHOTOS TAKEN, PHOTOS NOT TAKEN
“I don’t have the answers...around when to put the camera away and when to keep on clicking. But I do believe we owe it to ourselves to authentically examine how photography fits into our own lives—paying mind to when it enriches and when it detracts from our now.”
ADIEUX
Deanna Dikeman’s portrait series doubles as a family album, compressing nearly three decades of her parents’ goodbyes into a deft and affecting chronology.
THE WHISPER OF FAMILY GHOSTS
“I think about the material things—letters, pictures, tablecloths—that connect children to the houses they left behind. Pieces of paper, bolts of fabric, woven together in a chain and stretching across diasporas.” Hannah S. Pressman on the import-export business of our memories.
...and a Few More Links
StoryCorps is pulling some of the more heartwarming stories from their archive to uplift during difficult times.
Combing through thousands of digital images, these photo organizers help to “tell your life story.”
The eclectic museum safeguarding Selma's long and intricate past
Short Takes