Entries tagged as ‘memoir’
This Monday’s Link Roundup will warm the hearts of “nappers”. If you’re like me, a nap is quite delicious. In fact, I consider myself an expert napper. Be sure to check out A midday nap markedly boosts the brain’s learning capacity. Apparently, I’m getting smarter by the minute!
- The Importance of Storytelling in Marketing. “A story can be a really powerful way of illustrating the value of you product and in my experience is often the way that your prospects and customers will explain what you do to others.”
- A midday nap markedly boosts the brain’s learning capacity. “New research from the University of California, Berkeley, shows that an hour’s nap can dramatically boost and restore your brain power. Indeed, the findings suggest that a biphasic sleep schedule not only refreshes the mind, but can make you smarter.”
- YourNextRead Tells You What Book You Should Read Next. “Tell YourNextRead what book you just finished—and enjoyed!—and it will generate a web of eight related books. You can click on any of the books to learn more about it which will, in turn, generate a new web that’s based on that book. Alternatively you can use the thumbs up/down buttons to agree or disagree with the suggestions that YourNextRead gives you.”
- Thomas Edison – In His Own Words. “On October 21, 1929, Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, and President Herbert Hoover shared a stage in Schenectady, New York. Earlier in the evening, Albert Einstein had joined them via a recording made in Berlin, Germany and then sent to Schenectady for the occasion. The evening’s words were recorded on a device called a pallophotophone. Edison died two years later. The recordings were one of the few occasions in which Edison’s voice was ever recorded and possibly the last such recording every made of his voice.”
- Top Ten Most Popular Online Genealogy Magazines. “This list was prepared by Alexa. Alexa is the world’s leading company for measuring internet traffic. The company monitors the web traffic of millions of Internet sources, including thousands of genealogy sites. Web traffic is objectively categorized based on the actual number of visitors to each web site. From these Internet traffic statistics, Alexa maintains a list of the most popular online genealogy magazines.”
- Resources for Writing Memoir.“Last week I tweeted this advice on writing memoir: “Please don’t submit your memoir until you’ve read 20 good memoirs and 5 books on writing memoir – and learned from them…After my tweet, many people asked me for recommendations, so here they are.”
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Categories: Monday's Link Roundup
Tagged: genealogy, link roundup, Marketing, memoir, midday nap, Resources, storytelling, Thomas Edison
Another Monday and I have more great links for you. One of my favorites is Castaway. Here are five incredible stories, each centering on a message in a bottle. Don’t miss it! For the frugal, be sure to check out Changing Font To Save Ink.
- Legal Issues Affecting Writers. [Live Webinar $49; April 15th at 1:00 pm Eastern; duration: 75 minutes.] “Learn about the legal basics of concern to both fiction and nonfiction writers, and how to safely prepare and protect your work while not treading on the copyright or privacy rights of others. This session will also discuss how to get the most out of your publishing contract, for both articles and books.” [Thanks to Nancy Heifferon, APH Marketing Director for alerting me to this item.]
- Changing Font To Save Ink. “A Wisconsin university has found a new way to cut costs with e-mail — by changing the font. The University of Wisconsin, Green Bay has switched the default font on its e-mail system from Arial to Century Gothic. The university says the change sounds minor, but it will save money on printer ink when students print out e-mails in the new font.”
- bringing order to digital photo collections. “As more of our photographic images reside in the virtual world, we have not yet developed new systems for keeping track of them. I worry that a generation or more of photographic images will be lost. Here are two books that offer a new system for the digital era.”
- Making Web Video That Sells: eBook Review. “With the ever expanding growth of high speed internet connections, video is cropping up on most major websites more and more. Whether you are informing potential purchasers with a screencast or hoping to direct the next viral experience, video is something that most designers and developers should have at least a basic understanding of.”
- Memoir rooted in cherished, storied objects. “We look to moor our identities in things of the past,” says Seth C. Bruggeman, who teaches public history at Temple University. “We define who we are by the objects we choose to value,” Bruggeman says. “We have an almost religious belief in the power of objects to convey meaning.”
- Cast Away: 5 Amazing Stories of Messages in Bottles. “Whenever a message in a bottle is discovered on a beach or floating in the ocean, it feels like something out of a fairy tale. The idea that two people have made a connection that mathematics would say is virtually impossible gives us hope that life is more than a series of random events. Here are five stories of the almost unbelievable connections these messages have brought about.” [Thanks to Larry Lehmer of Passing It On for alerting me to this item.]
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Categories: Monday's Link Roundup
Tagged: family stories, genealogy, How to, legal issues, life story, link roundup, memoir, web video, writers
This Monday, with Valentine’s Day not far away, take a look at Us: Americans Talk About Love. Another favorite link of mine is Vintage Ad Browser, a great way to idle away the hours. Did you know that Aspironal is “Better than Whiskey for colds and flu”? [from a1928 medicine ad]
- Digital scribes transfer ancient words into bits and bytes. “In the corner of a quiet government office building, Leah Otak spends her work days in front of a computer and a cassette deck, poring over hundreds of hours of recorded interviews dating back as far as 1986. The interviews contain a massive trove of quickly-disappearing information: the traditional knowledge of elders from the Igloolik area covering everything from shamanism and kinship to traditional navigation methods and hunting and sewing techniques.”
- Vintage Ad Browser. “This site aims to collect vintage ads from a variety of sources, including comic books, CD-Roms, websites, APIs, your submissions, book, magazine & comic book scans, and more. At the moment, this site contains 123,311 ads.” [ Thanks to Melissa Dopp of Reel Lives Media for alerting me to this site.]
- Turn Web Pages Into PDFs. “Wouldn’t it be nice if there were a way for you to capture a web page in its entirety, either for future reference or for sharing it with your friends without having to start sending links back and forth? I’d like to capture the web page as it exists today. Luckily, there is an easy method of doing just that. PDFmyURL.com is a web service that captures web sites and converts them to PDF files.”
- A Time-Lapse of a Cover Creation. “After working on the latest cover for Macworld Magazine I wanted to show what is involved in making a cover. I focused on the three main areas: the photography, photoshop and design. I chose a time lapse format to convey lots of information in a small amount of time. The only drawback of time lapse is that since half a day goes by in 30 seconds, the whole process seem so easy!”
- ZOOM – Music Licensing for Videography & Digital Imaging. “For the first time ever, as a professional producer in the United States or Canada who uses music in the production of wedding and event videos, photo presentations and other related productions, you are NOW able to purchase the rights to use copyrighted music from the artists you choose at a price you can afford! The ZOOM License Bundle makes it possible.”
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Categories: Monday's Link Roundup
Tagged: family stories, link roundup, memoir, oral history, personal histories
Among this Monday’s Link Roundup are two sites that provide some useful advice on marketing with Facebook and building your personal brand. There’s a new television series starting in February called Faces of America that looks promising. My favorite pick this week is What Matters Now, a free e-book organized by Seth Godin. It contains seventy important thinkers with capsule thoughts on what matters now. Don’t pass it by.
- Series Explores “What Made America?” Through Genealogy. “Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr., whose “African-American Lives” series have been popular on PBS, is working on another genealogy documentary series to air in February and March. “Faces of America” uses genealogy and genetics to explore the family histories of 11 famous Americans, using their ancestors’ experiences to draw a picture of American history.”
- Using Assessments to Enhance Life-Story Writing. “Came across an interesting juxtaposition of two interests of mine. In an article title How to Write One’s Life Story in which author Christina Hamlett writes: Fill out self-assessment quizzes and introspective writing exercises. In addition to personality tests you can find in consumer magazines and on the Internet, books such as Barbara Ann Kipfer’s 4,000 Questions For Getting To Know Anyone and Everyone, Margaret Tiberio’s The Book of Self-Acquaintance and Dr. Gregory Stock’s The Book of Questions will get you thinking about what really makes you tick.”
- How to Market Your Business With Facebook. “A growing number of businesses are making Facebook an indispensable part of hanging out their shingles. Small businesses are using it to find new customers, build online communities of fans and dig into gold mines of demographic information.”
- Writing a memoir: 7 tips for defeating your inner critic. “That’s the nagging voice in your ear that says nothing you write is good or true, the voice that inflicts you with shame and guilt, especially if you’ve experienced trauma, abuse, or loss. The inner critic can inhibit you from acknowledging and revealing — even if only to yourself — what actually happened in your life.”
- How to Start (or Start-over) Building Your Personal Brand. “A ‘personal brand’ is in many ways synonymous with your reputation. It refers to the way other people see you. Are you a genius? An expert? Are you trustworthy? What do you represent? What do you stand for? What ideas and notions pop up as soon as someone hears your name?”
- Living Detroit Website Launched. “Wayne State University’s Honors College has launched a new web-based oral history project to gather people’s personal memories of large and small events in Metro Detroit. Jerry Herron, Dean of the Irvin D. Reid Honors College at Wayne State, calls the Living Detroit website a “living record of story telling, people’s memories of the people, the places, the things that have defined this great city of Detroit.”
- What Matters Now: get the free ebook. “Here are more than seventy big thinkers, each sharing an idea for you to think about as we head into the new year. From bestselling author Elizabeth Gilbert to brilliant tech thinker Kevin Kelly, from publisher Tim O’Reilly to radio host Dave Ramsey, there are some important people riffing about important ideas here. The ebook includes Tom Peters, Fred Wilson, Jackie Huba and Jason Fried, along with Gina Trapani, Bill Taylor and Alan Webber.”
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Categories: Monday's Link Roundup
Tagged: genealogy, life story, link roundup, Marketing, memoir, oral history, personal branding, Writing
This Monday’s roundup has three book suggestions. I’m anxious to read Confessions of a Public Speaker. The reviews are great. And as we start a new year, I’ve included some links to help you get a “leg up” on your personal history business. In particular, be sure to check out The Marketing Plan Formula.
- Half Broke Horses, A True-Life Novel by Jeannette Walls. “Half Broke Horses chronicles her maternal grandmother’s life. However, instead of basing the tale on research, her grandmother died when she was 8 years old, she uses her mother’s oral history of her grandmother’s life as the basis for the book.”
- The Pat Metheny Interviews by Richard Niles. “Composer, arranger and performer Richard Niles took his 25-year association with guitar legend Pat Metheny as a starting point for a three-part BBC series, Pat Metheny―Bright Size Life. Airing in 2007,…In this volume, Niles reassembles those interviews along with many others, sprinkled with comments from his closest collaborators—Gary Burton, Lyle Mays and Michael Brecker… Neither as complete as a biography or as self serving as a testimonial, The Pat Metheny Interviews offers a unique approach to the effort to get inside the head and heart of an artist who truly changed his medium. Added value—scores of black and white photos of Metheny performing as a youngster through current tours and discography. “
- The Marketing Plan Formula. “I’ve observed that when it comes to marketing, most of us don’t plan. Instead we have vague wishes and goals of what we’d like to do… Let me give you my complete formula for creating workable marketing action plans.”
- Confessions of a Public Speaker by Scott Berkun. “In this hilarious and highly practical book, author and professional speaker Scott Berkun reveals the techniques behind what great communicators do, and shows how anyone can learn to use them well. For managers and teachers-and anyone else who talks and expects someone to listen-Confessions of a Public Speaker provides an insider’s perspective on how to effectively present ideas to anyone. It’s a unique, entertaining, and instructional romp through the embarrassments and triumphs Scott has experienced over 15 years of speaking to crowds of all sizes.”
- Canadian Headstone Photo Project. “The mission of this project is to capture digital images and the complete transcription of headstones of our ancestors. As decades pass — many stones are becoming harder, if not impossible, to read the inscriptions they originally contained. By archiving the images and transcriptions, we can help save these important records and also assist researchers using this valuable resource.”
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Categories: Monday's Link Roundup
Tagged: personal histories, memoir, link roundup, Marketing, public speaking, photographic storytelling
November 30, 2009 · 1 Comment
As usual, this Monday’s link roundup is pretty eclectic. For music buffs, check out MIT’s Oral History Project which looks at 100 years of music at MIT. For fans of singer, songwriter Kathy Mattea, don’t miss her interview with Graffiti Magazine about her latest album Coal. She talks about the importance of place and family in the writing of the songs. And for any of you thinking about using speech recognition software, you might be quite surprised by Jon Morrow’s 20-minute video. I certainly was.
- Canadian Genealogy Centre. The Centre, under the auspices of Library and Archives Canada, states that its mission and vision is: “to facilitate the discovery of our roots and family histories as a basic part of our Canadian heritage. To encourage the use of genealogy and the resources available in libraries and archives as tools for life-long learning.”
- Eyeless in Gaza. “Joe Sacco is one of the world’s leading exponents of the graphic novel form…writers often get called “unique”. But Sacco’s work truly is, combining as it does oral history, memoir and reportage with cartoons in a way that, when he started out, most people – himself included, at times – considered utterly preposterous.”
- Music at MIT Oral History Project. “For over 100 years, music has been a vibrant part of MIT’s culture. This history covers a wide variety of genres, including orchestral, chamber, and choral musical groups, as well as jazz, musical theater, popular and world music…Through in-depth recorded audio interviews with current and retired MIT music faculty, staff, former students, and visiting artists, the Music at MIT Oral History Project is preserving this valuable legacy for the historical record.”
- Kathy Mattea on coal and frog gigging. “The Grammy-winning West Virginia native talks to [Graffiti Magazine] about her new album, ‘Coal’… I’ve gone through music I had long since forgotten; I’ve discovered the roots to a lot of music I’ve been doing for a long time…I uncovered a lot of family stories; my own history. I mean it has been profound; really a life changing experience.”
- Software helps share stories. “A team of researchers with the Montreal Life Stories project and the Centre for Oral History and Digital Storytelling (COHDS) have been able to turn a wish list of possibilities into a software program capable of organizing, classifying and eventually sharing recordings of memories and experiences. Stories Matter is a free, adaptable software program capable of working with Macs or PCs.”
- Does Speech Recognition Software Really Work? “One of my favorite posts from around the web last week came from our own Associate Editor Jon Morrow. He recorded a 20-minute video post for Problogger about how he works with speech recognition software to do all of his blogging.”
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Categories: Monday's Link Roundup
Tagged: Canadian genealogy, Kathy Mattea, link roundup, links, memoir, music, oral history
Lots of good stuff in this Monday’s Link Roundup. For Anne Murry fans, there’s a glowing review of her recently published memoir We needed her. Don’t think you can tell a riveting story in a little over a minute? Check out The Closet. And for those of you using LinkedIn, take a look at 10 Linkedin Tips for Professionals.
- Talking Suitcases tell unique life stories. “[Susan]Armington explained that a Talking Suitcase is broadly defined as some sort of container for a diorama of handmade artworks. Those created by the women of the Korean Service Center reflect each woman’s life. “These are thoughtful, courageous, and sensitive women. As they worked, more and more memories came alive.” [Thanks to Linda Coffin at www.historycrafters.com for alerting me to this article.]
- All of Me. “Anne Murray’s voice comes through in her autobiography with low-key, self-deprecating humour and surprising honesty.”
- Photo Storytelling. “The holiday season is nearly upon us! It’s a time of year I associate with food, family and friends, but it’s also storytelling season…Memory is a funny thing. You can show an older relative the same picture year after year and get no new information. Then all of sudden someone else in the room starts talking about an event related to the image, and remembrances start pouring out of that older relative. It’s all about finding the right memory trigger.”
- Danville resident used filmmaking to get the word out. “David Walker returned from military service in Iraq with countless memories and experiences — the kind that would stay with him for a lifetime. Fighting in a war is not something one easily talks about…[he]enrolled in English 497: Narrative, Oral History and New Media Technologies in the spring of 2009. The goal of the course was to help returning veterans become filmmakers by creating short documentaries about the experiences of the Iraq War. Dubbed “Back from Iraq: The Veterans’ Stories Project,” these films, along with student interviews, class footage, and course materials, are now available online at http://wpsu.org/backfromiraq.”
- The Closet. “Never underestimate the power of a great story.”- a seventy-four second YouTube video by Canal+ [Thanks to Larry Lehmer at Passing It On for suggesting this piece.]
- How to Be Happier: Stay Connected to Your Past. “A while back, my husband and I noticed a characteristic we shared – neither of us did a particularly good job of staying connected with our past. It was true of us as a couple, too, once we got married. In each stage of life, we’d have good friends, but when we moved to the next stage, we found it difficult to stay connected to the people to whom we’d earlier been close.”
- 10 Linkedin Tips for Professionals. “Despite the hype over Twitter and Facebook, Linkedin offers the greatest opportunity for professionals to make connections that lead to business.”
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Categories: Monday's Link Roundup
Tagged: Anne Murray, Life stories, link roundup, memoir, personal histories, photo storytelling, Tips
November 9, 2009 · 1 Comment
Better late than never! This Monday’s Roundup has some great ideas for family history gifts and holiday scrapbooking. You’ll also find some interesting memoir links, particularly the one from the Philadelphia Inquirer on Celebrating the memoir.
Celebrating the memoir – fiction’s day is done? “When browsing online or in a bookstore, one might easily conclude that every third person in the country is actively engaged in writing or reading a memoir.”
Ethnicity project reveals students’ shared traits across cultures. “The students were assigned to interview a family member to determine what traits characterize their family’s cultural heritage or ethnicity, and in the process to learn more about themselves.”
Holiday Scrapbooking, Writing, & Remembering. “When orange and yellow leaves begin swirling in funnel circles outside my windows and large pots of soup and stews and homemade bread ignite my taste buds, I begin thinking about holiday memories past and how I will inspire the new ones we will create this year.”
Love Hurts: Betrayal in Memoir. “When you write about your life in essay or memoir, you naturally lean toward things that have some emotional weight: the people, places and events in your life that have had enough heft to have left a mark. Often these things involve family members—whether siblings, mates, parents or children. This is where it can get sticky.”
Now’s the Time to Start on Family History Gifts. “We don’t mean to rush you into the winter holidays—it was just Halloween—but if you’re thinking of giving family history-related gifts this year, now’s the time to start. Many such gifts require prep work: For example, you’ll need to gather, scan, digitally touch up and label photos for a photo CD; start laying out an online photo book or calendar; or collect and transcribe family stories. Maybe you want to check another record or two before finalizing a compiled family history.”
Heinz® Ketchup and Josie Bissett Team Up To Grow 57,000 Wholesome Memories. “As American families turn to simpler pleasures this summer, Heinz® Ketchup and Josie Bissett are teaming up to encourage them to celebrate a priceless part of daily life: memorable moments. At HeinzWholesomeMemories.com, families are invited to share their personal photos and favorite memories, from backyard barbeques to baseball games to family traditions. For each story shared, Heinz will make a donation to the National Gardening Association (NGA), and 57 memories will be selected to win a Growing Wholesome Memories kit, filled with supplies for creating new memories at home. In keeping with the iconic Heinz “57,” the goal is to collect 57,000 inspiring memories.”
Passing on a recipe legacy. “A recipe for wonderful memories and fascinating stories begins with a hand-me-down cookbook.”
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Categories: Monday's Link Roundup
Tagged: family stories, Holidays, Life stories, link roundup, memoir, Tips
This past week I’ve been reminded how much our treasured possessions are a window into the stories of our life. My frail, ninety-one year old, mother has started to go through her modest collection of jewelry. She’s carefully trying to match each piece with a relative or friend she thinks would appreciate having it after she has died. Sitting with her, she began telling me the stories behind each piece. There are the art deco black-and-white earrings she bought to go with a very fashionable dress my father bought her shortly after they were married. A silver bracelet brought back by my dad from Pakistan during WWII is tarnished but her memories of my dad’s war experiences remain vivid. Each piece unlocks a story in my mother’s life.
And then there was a colleague at Victoria Hospice who told me of a unique funeral celebration he attended. A friend of the deceased gave a eulogy that was built entirely around photos of the shoes in her friend’s life. Each pair of shoes had a story to tell.
In The Globe and Mail newspaper on Thursday, I read an essay entitled Family Ties. It tells the story of a son’s remembrance of his father through the neckties that were passed down to him. Here’s an excerpt:
The other day I was getting ready for work and went into my closet to get a tie…I reached for a brown-, blue- and white-striped tie and I remembered that it was one of my father’s. He died last year and shortly afterward my mother, who was almost 80, made the decision to sell the big house we all grew up in. It took her a while, but she finally tackled the job of cleaning out my father’s closets… My father had a lot of ties – dozens and dozens and dozens of them…. And so, on this morning, I found myself knotting my father’s tie, remembering how we stood in front of the mirror years ago, him teaching me how to get a half-Windsor just right. I smiled, knowing I might be the only person in the building that day with a tie on.
Another interesting use of objects to tell a story appeared on the NPR website. Entitled A Catalog — Literally — Of Broken Dreams, it reviews the book Important Artifacts, by New York Times op-ed page art director Leanne Shapton. The NPR article points out:
Foregoing narrative entirely, Shapton tells the story of a couple’s relationship in the form of a staggeringly precise ersatz auction catalog that annotates the common detritus of a love affair — notes, CD mixes, e-mails, photos, books— and places the objects up for sale…. In choosing the conceit of an auction catalog, Shapton reminds us that the story of love can be told through the things we leave behind, but also by the condition in which we leave them.
All of this got me thinking. Wouldn’t it be interesting to do a memoir or life story built around the special things someone possesses? Something to keep in mind. Have you already done something like this? Love to hear from you, if you have.
Photo by Kylie
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Categories: Life stories · Memoirs · Personal historian · Tips
Tagged: family keepsake, favorite things, memoir, Personal historian, personal histories, preserving, reflection, stories
