Entries tagged as ‘memories’
This Monday’s Link Roundup has a little something for everyone. My favorite is A Powerful Story. It’s a great example of how a story can be told creatively and powerfully in three minutes. If you can spare a few minutes, you’ll be intrigued by this video.
- A Parking Lot Poet Turns 100. “In the tiny parking lot booth just west of Arthur Avenue in the Bronx, Joe Binder writes his poems: odes to the Rat Pack and the old days in the neighborhood.
“The time was great, the people were nice
And the pizza was only five cents a slice.”
Mostly, though, Mr. Binder parks cars. And though he celebrated his 100th birthday Thursday, he has no plans to retire.”
- Let’s Bring Back. “Inspired by Ms. Blume’s popular, longstanding Huffington Post column by the same name, Chronicle Books will release Let’s Bring Back as a book on November 1, 2010. A sophisticated, stylish cultural encyclopedia, Let’s Bring Back will celebrate forgotten objects, curiosities, pastimes, landmarks, and personae from bygone eras that should not have been left behind.” [Thanks to APH member Marcy Davis for alerting me to this item.]
- The Objects and Memory Project. “In the face of sudden disruption and inexplicable loss, there is a need to bridge the irreplaceable past with a hopeful future. This film follows people driven to preserve meaningful objects in the aftermath of 9/11 and other upheavals. Otherwise ordinary items come to symbolize experiences, aspirations, and identity. Without the objects, the stories would lack vibrancy; without the stories the objects would lack significance. Taken together, the images of the objects and the stories they evoke lead the viewer on a journey where the commonplace is transformed into the remarkable and where the stuff of history is highly personalized.”
- 10 Simple Google Search Tricks. “I’m always amazed that more people don’t know the little tricks you can use to get more out of a simple Google search. Here are 10 of my favorites. ” [Thanks to APH member Marcy Davis for alerting me to this item.]
- Digital Death Day. “What happens to your bits when you die? Digital Death Day takes place on May 20, 2010 at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, CA. It’s an unconference set to explore what happens when a person dies. What happens to your digital assets? How do you probate digital assets? What about jointly held digital assets? What happens to your digital avatars? What are the policies about your email account upon death?”
- A powerful story: Simple, but not simplistic. “If I asked you to create a compelling three-minute video with only written words, could you do it? Take a look at this interesting video treatment of words playfully telling a serious story.”
- LibraryThing. “There are a lot of ways to catalog a personal book collection, but I’ve settled on LibraryThing because I have more books than other media (we don’t buy movies, aren’t gamers, etc). I use LT to keep track of my own books, books I wish I owned, or want to read (using a wish list tag) and also to keep track of books I’ve loaned out to others (tag plus a note with the date loaned).”
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Categories: Monday's Link Roundup
Tagged: Google search tricks, Life stories, link roundup, memories, oral history, Personal historian
Keepsake by Marilyn Koop is a must-have for your library. A friend gave me a copy the other day and I’ve been totally captivated by it. Each page contains a photograph of time-worn hands cradling a loved keepsake. On the page opposite is a cameo history of the person, a brief story behind the keepsake, and words of advice. There are twenty portraits in the collection. All save two were of people living at the Wellington Terrace, an assisted care residence near Fergus, Ontario.
"This little cup and saucer was given to me by my great-grandmother on my second birthday when we were still in England. My mother used to threaten me: "What might happen to your little cup and saucer if you don't behave?" Winifred Banbury
Marlene Creates, a Newfoundland environmental artist and poet has written of the book:
When objects are keepsakes, they relate most to our hands and our sense of touch. In Marilyn Koop’s photographs, hands are as eloquent as faces. On first glance, many of the cherished objects being held by these elderly people seem quite modest … But on reading these elders’ stories, it turns out that…[these keepsakes] are important not because of their monetary value but because of their history and meaning. I am struck by the profound human caring and gratitude in these stories. The keepsakes are stand-ins for lost loved ones and times past. Through Marilyn Koop’s photographs and the brief life stories she has gathered, we are given the real value of these keepsakes.
"Henry carved this bar of soap on our honeymoon night in Niagara Falls." Agnes Koop
As a personal historian, I see a number of ways Keepsake can be of value:
- a gift for special clients
- in workshops as an example of creative story telling
- to awaken care facility administrators to the potential of life story projects with their own residents
- a source for reflection on aging, keepsakes, and remembrance
To Order
Contact Marilyn Koop directly at: koopwood@sympatico.ca
Price: Cdn $24.00 includes postage and handling.
_________________________________________
Images by permission of Marilyn Koop Copyright 2009
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Categories: Book reviews · Life stories · Memoirs · Personal historian
Tagged: elders, family keepsake, Keepsake, Marilyn Koop, memories, photo book
My favorite link in this week’s roundup is Retracing Memories. It’s an innovative way of getting students interested in both poetry and remembered moments. And for something wonderfully wacky, make sure to scroll down to the bottom and check out Fake Office background noise can help your home business. It’s just what I need. 
- New U.S. Television Series: “Find My Family” on ABC. “…a program with one simple mission — to bring families back together. With the help of a dedicated team of researchers, hosts Tim Green and Lisa Joyner guide people searching for lost loved ones through emotional journeys that will change their lives forever. The heartwarming new series premieres Monday, Nov. 23 (9:30-10:00 p.m. ET), following “Dancing with the Stars.” Full-hour editions of the show will air Mondays from 9:00-10:00 p.m., ET.”
- Retracing Memories. “There are plenty of paths to poetry but few are as accessible as retracing our own memories. When we ask students to write about something they remember, we give them the gift of choosing from events that are important enough to recall. They remember because what happened was funny or scary or embarrassing or heartbreaking or silly. They may not retain every detail, but they know how they felt, and emotion is the beating heart of poetry. A bonus of memoir writing is that students cannot be wrong about their idea. It’s their memory!”
- Lights, Camera…Last Words. “Some individuals have found a way to breathe life into dry estate-planning documents: They’re supplementing them with personal messages via video. With guidance—and caveats—from attorneys and financial advisers, some elderly and terminally ill individuals, and even some young parents, are picking up video cameras or hiring professional videographers to share their life stories, express hopes for younger generations and explain why they’re leaving certain assets to certain family members.”
- Cooking up a history lesson. “For Pine Ridge Middle School consumer science teacher Sandy Brock, recipes not only carry memories, but history.That is why Brock has developed a semester-long project for her consumer science classes using “The Holocaust Cookbook,” a cookbook that contains more than 200 recipes from 120 survivors of the Holocaust.”
- Fake Office background noise can help your home business. “To sound more professional on the phone, home businesses have started playing a unique CD in the background. It’s called Thriving Office and it’s filled with the sounds people expect to hear from a successful business, such as background conversations, phones, computers and file drawers. One track is Busy and the other is Very Busy.”
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Categories: Monday's Link Roundup
Tagged: family stories, Find My Family, Life stories, link roundup, memories, Resources, The Holocaust Cookbook
If you don’t know your history, then you don’t know anything. You are a leaf that doesn’t know it is part of a tree.
Michael Crichton - (1942 – 2008) American author, producer, director, screenwriter and physician
We live in a world that prizes speed, innovation, newness and youth. We’re constantly looking forward. And in the process we’ve become strangers to our past. We’ve either never heard our family stories or forgotten many of them. We pay a price for this. We feel rootless, unconnected and at our deepest core anxious and unhappy.
Recording and preserving our stories is not some flight of nostalgia. It is in fact a determined act to reclaim our history.
Photo by justneal
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Categories: Ancestors · Life stories · Preservation · Writing
Tagged: family stories, memories, Michael Crichton, preserving, quote, rootless
According to a recent study at the University of California, listening to music can be of benefit to Alzheimer’s patients. I became aware of this several years ago when I directed a series of documentary films for the National Film Board of Canada entitled Caregivers. In my research I talked to a number of people caring for a family member with Alzheimer’s. What was remarkable were the number of stories of people who had all but forgotten who they were but who could still sit down at a piano and play or sing songs from long ago.
The poet William Cowper in his poem Music and Recollection captures the power of music to unlock memories:
With easy force it opens all the cells
Where Memory slept. Wherever I have heard
A kindred melody, the scene recurs,
And with it all its pleasures and its pains.
Such comprehensive views the spirit takes,
That in a few short moments I retrace
(As in a map the voyager his course)
The windings of my way through many years.
The other day, I was again reminded of this phenomenon. I was responding to a colleague’s request on the Association of Personal Historian’s Listserv. She was asking for help on how to gather information for a life story from an individual whose memory was fading. I mentioned the possibility of using music to aid in memory recall. This sparked recollections from other Listserv members who reminisced about touching moments when music helped an aging parent . They have generously allowed me to share these stories with you here.
My mom, Marie, died from Alzheimer’s. She had always loved music and played the piano by ear. Shortly before she died, long after she really knew who we were, long after she could walk or take care of her basic needs or read or even carry on much of a conversation, my sister wheeled her over to the grand piano in the facility where she lived. And she played a tune. I had forgotten all about this until I read Dan’s post. As they say, “thanks for the memories.”
Susan Owens – talesfortelling.com
I worked briefly on a project a few summers ago with a neighbor whose mother no longer remembered anyone in the family or her group of long-time friends (I was actually helping him wrap up her story because he had given up on getting more information).
While he was visiting her one day in a facility where she was staying after a fall, he watched as his mother drifted toward a member of another family. They had walked into the community room carrying a violin case for one of the other residents. Without hesitation, his mother rolled her wheelchair up to the stranger and asked if she could “see” the violin. And, to his amazement, moments later, she was playing it!
My neighbor, her son, knew that she had played in her younger years, before marrying , and that she had always said she was quite good. In talking with her after the impromptu concert, she suddenly asked if he would like to take lessons from her. He had no desire to learn but accepted her offer so that they would have a mutual activity.
Weeks later, she bragged about him as “her star pupil” and, during their breaks, she ended up telling him stories from a part of her life that he’d never known. The “lessons” lasted nearly a year before her mind and her physical control began fading rapidly. Interestingly, during those months, she became very introspective about her parents and the impact they had on her life and very philosophical about her aspirations and dreams – but, the observations and assumptions she made were based on the period of her life as a concert violinist!!
Stephen Evans – www.the-freelance-editor.com
As we were moving my parents out of their home into an assisted living facility (because my dad needed that kind of care), one of the last things to leave the house was the old family piano. It had been in Dad’s childhood home and he had played most evenings after supper for more than eighty years. The evening before the piano movers arrived, my partner Kathy and I went over to have dinner with my parents. Kathy, who is a very talented musician, went to the piano and began to play. Knowing that Dad loved Jerome Kern’s melodies, she started out with some tunes from “Showboat.” Dad had been sitting in his armchair, staring blankly at the wall. When the music began he suddenly focused on Kathy and started to sing along, perfectly on pitch, with every word of the lyrics intact. They played and sang together for almost two hours while Mom and I smiled at each other and wept silently in the other room. It was the first time that Dad had perked up like that in months, and it was a wonderful gift to us all. Dad wasn’t able to play a single note by himself anymore, but with Kathy’s help the music came back to him.
Linda Coffin – www.historycrafters.com
Photo by Desirae
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Categories: Life stories · Tips
Tagged: Alzheimer's, benefit, memories, musical memory, reflection, William Cowper
World Creativity and Innovation Week started on April 15th and ends on the 21st. You can find out more about it here. It struck me that this was a perfect opportunity to come up with some creative ways to tell a life story. Here are four:
- A Six-Word Memoir. Smith Magazine has been collecting six-word memoirs from readers and compiling them into books. Check them out here. One of my favorites is, “I still make coffee for two.” by Zak Nelson. Larry Smith, the creative brains behind Smith Magazine says: “There’s no longer any debate: you can absolutely tell a compelling, poignant, and/or funny story in just six words. But six words aren’t necessarily the end—they can be a beginning. We’ve heard from many writers whose six-word memoir spurred them on to write thousands more.” What is your Six-Word Memoir?
- A Life Story Quilt. I was first introduced to this idea by a dying mother of two teenage girls. She had survived cancer for some 8 years. Over that time she gathered all kinds of “stuff” connected with her children’s growing up. On her last Christmas she transformed this material into two beautiful quilts for her daughters. Here are two other examples of life story quilts – the The Journey to the White House Quilt and the Life Story Quilt project by Very Special Arts of Nebraska.
- A Life Story Box. Find an attractive “archival quality” box large enough to hold a lifetime of memories. Into your time capsule place your photo albums, home movies, old letters, favorite recipes, airline boarding passes, theater and concert tickets, high school and university year books, certificates, old passports, etc. I would take the time to carefully number each of the items and include a list that identifies the significance of each. This is particularly important for future generations who will need some help to identify, for example, the importance of an old concert ticket you’ve included in the box.
- A Graphic Life Story. I wrote in an earlier post about a cartoonist who helped schoolchildren create graphic life stories about their parents or grandparents. If you have an artistic flair why not think of your life story or that of a loved one in terms of hand illustrated panels. Can’t draw? Then consider hiring an illustrator. Too expensive? Try checking out a college or university fine arts program. It might be possible to find a student willing to work with you as part of her studies.
I’m curious to know what unique ideas you’ve come up with for telling a life story. Share your ideas so others can benefit from your creativity!
Photo by Cornelia Kopp
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Categories: How to · Life stories · Tips
Tagged: creative approaches, life story, memories, quilt, Tips
Comox Valley
I recently heard of a creative and wonderful life story project undertaken by cartoonist, Jesse van Muijlwijk who lives in the Comox Valley of Vancouver Island, British Columbia. Here’s an excerpt from an article in the Comox Valley Echo:
About 200 students from grades 3 through 7 at Huband Elementary spent three weeks learning how to create graphic novels from Dutch cartoonist Jesse van Muijlwijk. Van Muijlwijk, a local resident whose cartoon De Rechter (The Judge) appears in 14 Dutch newspapers with two million readers, began by teaching the students how to interview their parents and grandparents and then write down their stories.
“They were the journalists of their own family past,” said van Muijlwijk. “Then they would bring those stories back to the classroom. Beautiful stories, all of them. Some stories from 100 years ago in Victoria, or from great-grandparents who wanted to take the Titanic and missed the boat. Stories from World War One, World War Two, the Korean War.But also people immigrating to Canada, starting from scratch and building up their lives…”
During the third and final week, the students brought in their completed storyboards and learned drawing techniques. All of the skills they learned were then used to complete the final versions of their graphic novels. “Now we have more than 200 artworks, covering the history of the 20th century, covering all kinds of countries and covering all kinds of local history too,” said van Muijlwijk. “They are historians, they are journalists, they are writers, sometimes they are poets in their works and they are artists in visualizing their work. It adds to their identity. You know who you are when you know where you come from.”
You can read more about this innovative project by clicking here.
Categories: Life stories · Memoirs · Preservation
Tagged: cartoons, family life stories, graphic life stories, Jesse van Muijlwijk, memories, school children
I was reading the Globe and Mail a few days ago. It’s one of our best Canadian newspapers. Michael Kesterton writes something called “A Daily Miscellany of Information”. It’s my favorite part of the paper – a quirky, fascinating collection that covers both the sublime and the ridiculous. Click here to sample Kesterton’s work.
What fascinated me was an item he called Depression Pencils, which I’ve included below. It reminded me how important it is to delve deep when interviewing people about their life story. It’s in the details, like the story of depression pencils, that a whole period of history can be illuminated.
In a roundup of survivors’ anecdotes about the Depression, the Charleston (W. Va.) Gazette heard from Arlene Pettit, 83, a retired schoolteacher who, as a girl, used to watch with dismay as classmates sharpened pencils down to a nubbin. “I would tell them that we were only allowed one pencil at a time. A pencil cost a penny. My uncle owned a grocery store. If we didn’t have a penny, we would take him one egg and that would buy a pencil. My dad would not let us use the sharpener at school. We brought our pencil home and he would sharpen our lead every night, because it was hard to get even a penny. That sounds ridiculous, but that’s how things were in those days.”
Photo by Billie
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Categories: Interviewing · Life stories · Memoirs · Personal historian · Questions · Writing
Tagged: Interviewing, life story, memories, pencils, The Great Depression, Tips, Writing
Some years ago, when I was a filmmaker I did a documentary on family caregivers. The show dealt with five caregivers, two of whom were struggling to look after a parent suffering from Alzheimer’s disease. I had a close-up look at the challenge it inflicts on patient and caregiver alike. Since I became a personal historian five years ago, I felt that there was therapeutic value in recording the life stories of those with Alzheimer’s.
Soon after starting my personal history work, I had the opportunity to do a series of video interviews for a charming and accomplished woman who was at an early stage of Alzheimer’s. Both she and her family realized that if I didn’t get the stories recorded they would soon be lost forever. She thoroughly enjoyed my visits and seemed stimulated by the recall of familiar stories from her past. Today that same woman has deteriorated considerably but her family finds some comfort in knowing that her life lives on in these recordings we made.
The other day I read an article in MayoClinic.com Alzheimer’s: Mementos help preserve memories which seems to bear out my anecdotal observations about the value of life stories and Alzheimer’s. The article notes:
“Caregivers become the memory for their loved one with Alzheimer’s disease,” says Glenn Smith, Ph.D., a neuropsychologist at Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minn. “By gathering memories, you can bring important events and experiences from your loved one’s past into the present. You’re the link to his or her life history….By creating a life story, you affirm for your loved one all the positive things he or she has done in life and can still do. Even after your relative’s memories start to fade, creating a life story shows that you value and respect his or her legacy. It also reminds you who your loved one was before Alzheimer’s disease.”
Tom Kitwood in his groundbreaking 1997 book, Dementia Reconsidered believes that a Life History Book for a person with dementia, complete with photographs, should become best practice. He says, “In dementia a sense of identity based on having a life story to tell may eventually fade. When it does biographical knowledge about a person becomes essential if that identity is still to be held in place.”
If you know a family member at an early stage of Alzheimer’s disease, you might give serious consideration to recording their life story. If you’re a professional personal historian unsure if you should work with clients who have dementia, give it serious consideration. You could be providing a wonderful gift.
Web related resources:
Alzheimer’s Association (USA)
Alzheimer Society (Canada)
The Fisher Center For Alzheimer’s Research Foundation
Photo by luca:sehnsucht
Categories: Life stories · Resources · Tips
Tagged: Alzheimer's, benefits, life story, memories, Personal historian, preserving
