I started with Beth Lamie’s idea, Draw From A Hat. Put a set of questions in a hat and draw one out and ask. Repeat. That was the inspiration: That, and “Get the kids involved.”

But of course, somebody has to think up the questions that get placed into the hat. I focused on this with my nieces—two girls, aged 9 (nearly 10) and 4. Let them be the ones to come up with questions for everyone.

What we did to prepare for Dinner Conversation

I arrived at their house, got them to step away from the computer and the Tee vee (sigh. yes. true.) with an aunt-ish scheme: Think of some questions to ask people at the dinner table. Instead of generic questions that would apply to anybody, I decided to get as specific as possible. What question do you want to ask your Dad? Your Mom? Grandma? Uncle J? Uncle T? Aunt Susan?

Aunt Susan: Okay, girls, after dinner, let’s ask everyone questions about themselves and record the answers. Okay? Okay. So the first thing we do is think of questions to ask people. Can you think of questions to ask people?

Nearly 10: What kind of questions?

Aunt Susan: Well, there’s one question I’d like to ask your Mama (who is from Panama). And that is, What was her first Thanksgiving like? You’ve been having Thanksgivings all your life. It’s an American tradition. But your Mama didn’t grow up in America. So she probably remembers her first one because she had it as an adult.

Nearly 10: (eyes wide) Ooh!
(some dawning comprehension lit upon her face.)

Aunt Susan: So what questions would you like to ask?

Nearly 10: Oh, I could ask Dad about what inspired him to be a surfer!

Aunt Susan: Exactly! Good question. Let’s write it down. You want to write it, or shall I?

She did. Once she thought of a new question, Nearly 10 wrote it down in her notebook. Nearly 10 wrote them down.

Younger Sister (age 4), also came up with a couple of questions.

Younger Sister: I want to know what Mommy’s favorite plant is! (Their mother loves gardening)

I had a slight challenge right there.

Aunt Susan: Is there another way to ask that question about plants? “What is your favorite plant” will get a very short answer—the name of one plant. How about thinking of a question that’ll get a longer answer?

With a little coaching, she settled on: “How did you become a gardener?”

We went through the same process with her other question—“Did you play hide-and-go-seek?” (A question that asks for a YES or NO answer) became “What games did you play when you were a kid?”

Alternatively, I might have kept the original question and had them ask a follow-up question.

• What is your favorite plant? What do you like about it? 
• Did you play hide and go seek? Tell me a story about one time you played hide and go seek.

I pulled out a bunch of 3 x 5 cards. Nearly 10 wrote 1 question per card.

Some examples:

• What was your first experience sailing?
• What was it like when you first started surfing?
• Why did you want to become an air force pilot?
• What was your first project for Space?
• What was it like when your first baby was born?
• How did you become a gardener?
• What was it like when you went to High School?

Once the questions were ready, it was time to get the equipment in place.

Recorder (with a built-in microphone): check!

Enough free space on the memory card: check! 
(a 4 gb card, I made sure that there was at least 2 gigabytes of free space. That would give us plenty—more than 3 hours recording time).

Headphones to monitor the recording quality: check!

New batteries for recorder: check!

Backup power, (first, the power adapter that plugs into an outlet and an extension cord to bring power right to where the recorder was located): check!

And… The stack of cards with the questions.

Everything was ready and in place.

How it worked in practice

Thanksgiving conversation has distinct phases. The chatter of anticipation and “Go wash your hands, it’s ready, it’s ready” gave way to the round-robin “what I’m thankful for,” the blessing, the chit chat of taking of plates to the food line and the piling high thereof, the compliments uttered between initial bites, the shushed concentration of eating, the going back for seconds, and then finally, relaxed conversation.

Not too long into the relaxed conversation phase, I introduced our next activity. “Nearly 10 is going to ask you all questions and we’re going to record it.”

I powered up the recorder, and spoke an introduction. “It’s Thanksgiving 2010 and the Kitchens family is gathered here in Henderson, Nevada. Nearly 10 has some questions she’s going to ask and we’re recording what people say.”

Nearly 10 got her deck of cards with questions. She shuffled the cards. I said, for the benefit of those who could not see her,  “She’s shuffling the cards.”

She said, “It can’t be right without the shuffle.” The she chose one and said, “Grandma, tell about a time—one of your first times sailing a boat.”

That launched Grandma (my Mom) into a story that went well into five minutes. We grownups were amused by what she said; it was our childhood she was talking about. She painted a vivid picture of some heavy seas, and some cantaloupe getting loose and being tossed around in the slop, and of one that broke, with cantaloupe seeds all over the cabin of the boat. Nearly 10, who was primed to ask her next question, twitched with frustration. She sighed and rolled her eyes.

She spent all that time thinking up questions, and didn’t anticipate how long it would take to answer them. I hadn’t anticipated that I’d need to tell her to expect to wait a long time in between asking questions. Oops.

I told her, “The point of these questions is to get people telling the stories that they otherwise wouldn’t tell. It’s okay.”

The session continued for an hour. She asked some more questions (including Younger Sister’s question about gardening). When appropriate, I moved the position of the recorder so it would sit near the person talking. (I did that before they began talking, so any microphone-handling noise would not mask actual storytelling.)

The recorder picked up multiple simultaneous conversations around the table. This was not your sit down one-on-one type of recorded interview. The recording contains side conversations (some whispered, some out loud), background noise of table clearing and questions about the pot of whatever on the back burner with the flame on, interruptions, follow-up questions, and more. It’s a thing of beauty. An hour’s worth of question and answer, where each person had a chance to tell one story, and each of us heard and learned new things about people we’ve known for all our lives.

There was one guest to this gathering who was not a family member, per se. considered family. She was asked a question, and she answered, but that exchange was not recorded. We had the hear something about you in the moment, but it didn’t become part of the record.

Observations about this approach

• Everyone is more open to participating because the activity is child-centered.
• It took us out of our standard routine of things-we-talk-about-at-Thanksgiving.
• Though the adult siblings have known one another all our lives, each of us heard something new about the other person.
• Everyone gets involved in the process.
• Kids think up ways to come up with questions.
• Stories are edited to be G rated.
  My first thought in response to the question I was asked (What was it like when you first went to high school?) was not suitable for an under-10 audience. The first thing I thought of concerned an event that involved teenage experimentation with a mild, plant-based consciousness-altering substance. It would have been an interesting story to tell and to hear. But I didn’t want to go there with my nieces. I ended up talking about the second thing I thought of.

Lessons Learned: How I’d prepare differently.

Thinking on last year’s event (and listening to the recording), there are some things I would do differently.

• Setting expectations for children.
  Even though, in the moment, I helped my niece in her moment of impatience, I think the whole thing would have gone a bit better if I helped establish expectations for what this would be like.
  I might’ve said,

  “You know what? You’ve thought up a bunch of really good questions to ask people. That’s excellent. But there’s more to this than pulling a card out and asking someone a question, getting a short answer and then asking the next one. The whole point is to get other people to talk and to tell stories. After you ask a question, the other person is going to talk. Maybe even for what seems like a long time. If someone talks for a long time telling a story, that’s how you know that you’ve thought up a good question.”

• I would create a list with everyone’s name on it that the “interviewer” can mark off and track who has been asked a question and who has not. If, say, the child’s parent gets asked three questions before a question is asked of someone else, this helps ensure that everyone actually does takes turns.

This Week: Thanksgiving Family Interviews 2.0

This week, I’d like to try a repeat of what we did last year. We have opportunities and challenges.

Opportunities

In addition to the usual suspects (Mom, brothers, hosting brother and his wife and children), we will have more people at this year’s gathering:

• Sister in law’s parents who are visiting from Panama
• Nephew A —sister in law’s nephew (Panamanian) and family, visiting from out of state
• Cousin’s family, also visiting from out of state.
• Cousinlings (cousin’s children)—more kids to think up and ask questions

More people around the table means more stories! Different stories from different people.

Those who were there from last year will have a sense of how this goes (oh yeah, I remember that from last year—We take turns answering questions).

This is a good way to introduce the Panamanian grandparents to sharing their stories through oral history. I don’t think they’ve been interviewed before. I do recall recording individual stories by friends and family members for Nephew A’s wedding, but his grandparents weren’t in the States for it.

Challenges

• With more people around the table, it will make for a really long table. We might have a separate table for kids. Or it may be hard for someone way at one end to hear what the person at the other end of the table is saying.
• Bilingual stories in a group setting.
  Obviously, it’s easier to tell a story in your own mother tongue. There will be stretches of time where people will not understand what the speaker is saying.

The kids that will help gather questions are older—three of the four are in the 9-12 year-old range.

Here, I brainstorm ways to involve them:

• To the kids: Think up your own questions to ask.
• Kids, go to the others and ask them to think of questions to ask someone else.
• Now go through all the questions, and divide them into two types:
  1. A question for a specific person
     (such as, Dad, tell about when you first started surfing, Mom how did you become a gardener)
  2. A question you can ask anyone
     What was it like when you first went to high school? What was it like when your first baby was born?

  For the “ask anyone” kind, draw names of all the people present to make it random. (Oh wait, maybe this is too complicated. But hey, it can be crazy fun complicated, too)

What about you? Do you have any plans for gathering stories from family members at Thanksgiving or for the National Day of Listening?

UPDATE: Monday, 28 November, 2011. A great time was had by all. Arrived to learn that Nephew A did not, in fact, come for Thanksgiving. Other arrivals (Thursday was a travel day for two households) made it difficult to plan the interview with the kids. Back up plan: Let’s do this Friday. But oh, the numbers of people and the plans already in place and diverse directions they all went in made it too difficult to pull this together.

I had an incredibly marvelous time with family. Amazing. (Saturday morning at a frightfully early hour, we all gathered around the TV to watch the launch of Mars Curiosity Rover—my boyfriend worked on the landing radar system for the Mars Science Lab!) But recording interviews was not a part of the picture this year.

That’s a lesson in itself. Many people going in many directions makes it more difficult to do group activities. Come to think of it, last year’s gathering was “small” by our standards. 8 people. This year: 12 (plus: double the number of kids)

Kim von Aspern-Parker blogs at Le Maison Duchamp. Highlights of Part 1: For Dad to start talking, he had to be in an altered state. Using a genealogy chart to interview? Surprise! Advice for interviewing: remember to listen for the stories, don’t interrupt people, and work from photo albums.

Disclosure and Permissions

In the first half, while Kim talked about her visit with her 90-year old aunt and the misunderstanding over the genealogy chart, she described putting her recorder out on the table with a bunch of other items (keys, phone, etc.), and interviewing her aunt, and letting her know after the fact. We revisit a bit of that conversation for this later section on disclosure and permissions.

Kim von Aspern-Parker: I said, “You know, all these stories you’re telling me. They’re all about our family, It’s not so much that they’re dead people but they’re our family.” And I said, “And I didn’t grow up in this family, so I don’t know these stories. So I’ve been taping them so I can have them.”

She said, “Oh, okay.”

She was okay with that.

A little later on, I mentioned a video I created. Which brought up the topic again: 

Kim von Aspern-Parker: If you’re going to videotape [the interview], I think, too—or even tape record it it’s okay if they know it [beforehand], usually it’s better if you tell them afterwards. Because they tend to get uptight that they’re on camera or that they’re being taped.

If they say, “Oh, no no no I don’t want that taped,”

you can say, “Okay, nobody’s going to hear it but me, Mom.”

Or “It’s not okay for ME to have it? Really? You know how my memory is, Mom. Really? You want me not to have that?”

You can always erase it if they really are uncomfortable. Assure them of that.

FOHUDT: Have you—?

KvAP: I’ve never had anybody ask me to erase it.

Family Oral History Using Digital Tools: In your case, you’ve told them after the fact, and my family’s “I’m cool with doing this” when I ask beforehand. But I’m interested in the varieties of experience. Because I’m a member of the Oral History Association, where the whole idea of taping surreptitiously is a total “No no” ...for me…

[Here, Kim went in another direction, but I wish to finish my thought. I think that if you’re going to record an interview, you get permission ahead of time. This series is about finding out what it’s really like for people to interview family members. I’m collecting real-world information on what people tell their family members about the recording. I’ll revisit this issue at the conclusion of the series.]

Kim von Aspern-Parker: If it’s your family members and I fully say don’t record it and not let them know. They absolutely deserve to know that you’ve taped it.

I’ve only done that to my family members who, if I pull the recorder out, will say, “What are you doing? Put that away.”

I’ll record it. [Afterwards,] I’ll say, “Now, I recorded that. Is it okay? Cause you know, I just wanted the stories. I forget the stories.”

And they say, “yeah, okay, that’s fine.”

I found, too, that if you set up the video camera, if you’re interviewing somebody who’s not your family member, let’s say, because when I was interviewing for school, I used to have to interview people that were not family members, and of course you have to disclose right off the front: “I’m going to record this.”

If you set up the video camera and get it ready and then you just chit chat and talk and get things rolling, they forget that the camera’s there. You have to get them comfortable, first. Otherwise they tighten up and it’s like, “Did I say that right?” They’re worried about correctness and not stuttering and not saying “um” and not saying “you know” and all those things that you see in yourself when you’re practicing a speech or something.

Family Oral History Using Digital Tools: I don’t have experience videotaping people during an interview. I do all mine audio. And something like this (Livescribe pen, what I used to record this interview) is pretty unobtrusive.

Do you have any family interview disaster stories? Like Omigod it was a fiasco, or something close to a fiasco?

The Hardest Interview

Kim von Aspern-Parker: The hardest interviews I’m still working on right now. I haven’t done very much of them. I started breaking ice.

It’s my aunt Filo, and she’s deaf and she’s 92. Her memory’s not all it used to be. And most of her life people have done things around her thinking she didn’t get it, because she’s deaf. So she’s always been a kind of the fly on the wall; people thought she didn’t know what was going on, brcause she’s deaf. But of course she reads lips perfectly. She’s not stupid. And a long time ago, people equated deafness with a mental illness, you know, they thought you were “touched.”

She’s got great stories. But I’m still getting her warmed up to the fact. I speak some sign language, and so I’m practicing my sign language so I can get it better so I can get it better and she’ll be more comfortable with me. I try to go see her at least a couple of times a year.

Family Oral History Using Digital Tools: How far of a distance is that?

Kim von Aspern-Parker: She’s in Louisiana, and I’m in California. So it’s not like I can talk to her on the phone. I can’t Skype her. So it’s a hard interview.

As far as a fiasco, it hasn’t crashed and burned yet. But it’s a hard interview because she’s deaf so everything’s in sign language. And she’ll talk, I had the photo album thing out and we were doing the photo album thing, and I said, “who are these people?” And she says, “That’s Dickie. That’s my brother. He’s dead.” I said, who’s this? “Oh, that’s my sister Audrey, that’s your Mama. She dead, too.” Because she’s 92, she’s outlived all of them. And so she can speak, for the most part, she signs some of it, but she speaks for the most part.

Because of her stilted speech, because she can’t hear—she lost her hearing when she was nine. So you’ve got this kind of stilted speech. She’s got great stories.

She was telling me stories about when she lost her hearing—she was really really sick—and supposedly it was an influenza epidemic. But my aunt- a different aunt—thinks it might’ve been a spinal meningitis thing that went around. My great grandmother died, And several people in the neighborhood died, and my aunt Filo lost her hearing. So when Aunt Filo woke up she wasn’t dead, but a lot of other people were. So she had been unconscious for a week, and when she woke up all these people were dead that she knew. And she was 9. And then because she was deaf, they basically sent her away to go to a school for the deaf. And so then she was ostracized from her family. So it was a very hard experience growing. And then her family started treating her like she was “touched”—she wasn’t all there. Mommy coddled her and Daddy felt she was defective, somehow. She’s going to have great stories to tell.

Family Oral History Using Digital Tools: yeah. But how to do that. Now is that one where because of sign language or whatever, you’ll say, videotape it because you may have more fluent sign and I’d like to get help with interpreting it, or looking it.

Kim von Aspern-Parker: Yeah, I probably will videotape it. I’m still in the ice-breaking stage. I’m doing just a recording of her. Because she does speak. Plus, I wanted to have her voice. She is 92, and should she pass away, I want to have that. This next trip is going to be videotaped. Because they’re getting up there in age.

More advice: Don’t put it off, Take a class

And that’s probably my next bit of advice: Don’t put it off. If you have relatives that are anywhere over the age of 50, start interviewing them, because that’s when heart attacks happen. That’s when their dementia sets in, and things like that. Anytime after 50 and it starts going downhill. [laughter] I know.

FOHUDT: Scary.

KvAP: I’m 53

FOHUDT: I just had my 52nd birthday. Right.

KvAP: It’s starting to go down. Get my stories now.

FOHUDT: cool. Cool. Well [pause] is there any other thing you’d like to say about the experience?

KvAP: Of interviewing?

FOHUDT: yes.

Kim von Aspern-Parker: Well, it doesn’t hurt to go and take some classes on interviewing techniques which I know you can get through journalism schools and in junior colleges/community colleges; oral history programs.

I think that my state archives in California has an oral history program where they’ll teach you how to interview. Because it is a technique. You have to know how to lead the person into telling you their stories. And helping them when they stutter and they kinda go, “well, I don’t know what you’re looking for? What kind of story are you looking for, what do you want me to tell you?”

Once you get them talking, then it’s great. But a lot of people aren’t—I’m a chatterbox; I’ll talk to fence posts (laughs). The cows in the pasture, we have great conversations—

FOHUDT: Moo.

Kim von Aspern-Parker: Yeah (laughs) But as far as some people, they’ll sit there and they’re like, “What do you want me to tell you?” My mother was kind of like that. she was never really a storyteller.

It’s like, “I don’t know what you want me to say? I don’t know what you want me to tell you.”

“Just tell me about when you were a kid. I mean, did you ever remember being sick? Were you ever sick when you were in school?” “not that I can remember.” She makes story dragging it out of her. And those are hard. And again, I think the photo albums help with that. I found that if you find yourself trying to draaaag a story out of somebody:

“Well, did you ever play a practical joke on anybody?”

“Oh, no, I was much too serious for that.”

“Okay. Did you have younger siblings?”

“Yes.”

“How many younger siblings do you have?”

When you have a drag it out story like that, when you’re dragging the information out of a person, I think that a photo album is the best technique that I’ve found.

Family Oral History Using Digital Tools: In your experience as an interviewer, where you are dragging something out, is there a shift in mental attitude , where you think, “how do I approach this?” ?

KvAP: You start kind of panicking as the interviewer. It’s kind of like, “Oh, this is going to be hard.”

Everybody has a button.

FOHUDT: So you recognize panic?

KvAP: Yeah. oh yeah.

FOHUDT: Do you stay in panic mode, or do you find—what happened with you after panic?

KvAP: Well, my usual first reaction is like, “Oh god, this is going to be hard; she’s not a chatterbox. What’ll I do?” Then I say to myself, “Okay, you have to find their button.” Everybody has a button—something they love to talk about.

With my mother, it was her children. It wasn’t her parents, or her life when she was growing up. She didn’t consider her self important, but her children were everything. My mother was talking about me and my sister. Like, “Why did you put me and Debbie into dancing lessons?” And then she’d talk about that. And that leads into talking about how she’d always wanted to do that as a child, but they lived during the Depression, they didn’t have that kind of money.

“You lived in the depression? Really? What was that like?” and “Where did you live during the depression?”

“I was in Texas.”

“Well, what was that like in Texas?” ... You see pictures of the dust bowl. So then if you can relate it to history, and say, “I’ve seen pictures of the dust bowl, was it like that in Texas?” And then she might start talking about that. “No.”

“Did you have a car?”

“Yeah, we had a car.“And then she might start talking about that.

And so you find the button—which was, for my mother, talking about her children—and then you turn it, you twist it to where you want the interview to go. Obviously, I didn’t want her to talk about me. I know about me. But I wanted it to twist around to her childhood.

“Okay, so you never got to take dance lessons, did you take baton lessons? Did you take ice skating lessons? Did you do anything fun like that? Did you belong to any groups?” ...and then you can get her talking.

“You had me in Girl Scouts, Did you do Girl Scouts, is that why you had me in Girl Scouts?”

“No, we had this other group, we did this church group thing…” and then she might start talking about that.

Family Oral History Using Digital Tools: So tell me about your church, what else about it? Right. It’s finding the way in—

Kim von Aspern-Parker: Yeah, finding the door in.

Family Oral History Using Digital Tools: Finding the way in.

All of Kim von Apsern-Parker’s advice

Here, in one place, is Kim’s advice for people doing interviews.

• Don’t ask yes or no questions. Ask questions that will bring out a story.
• Listen. Stories happen in the weirdest times. Pay attention. Take advantage of a story opening and ask a follow-up quesiton if it sounds like the person has mentioned something that might lead to a story.
• Don’t interrupt them. Don’t be so focused on the one data point you’re after that you miss the story they are telling you.
• Use photo albums to get people talking.
• Don’t put it off. Start interviewing any family member over the age of 50.
• Take a class on interview technique to draw stories out of someone. Journalism classes or oral history workshops are two good places to learn interview techniques.
• Find the topic that the person loves to talk about—and use that to drive the interview in the direction you want to go. (Mom loves to talk about her children, so jump from what you did as a mother to your kids to what you experienced as a child growing up).

Jamboree Geneabloggers on Interviewing
Introduction
Kim von Aspern-Parker, Part 1

This interview transcript has been lightly edited for clarity and to remove, you know, a few, like, forms of spoken word that don’t, um, work as well as the written word. There are also places in the interviews where I withhold information at the request of the person interviewed.

Kim von Aspern-Parker: When I started interviewing my dad, I started asking him questions about his family, cause I was doing my genealogy. The first indication that I got from my dad that he was going to be a hard interview:

“What was your grandfather’s name?”

He says, “Mr. Gilchrist.”

“No, like first name, Dad.”

“Grandpa.”

(Probably not.)

So, every time I interviewed my dad it was like draaaaagging information out of him, except this one time - he was having congestive heart failure—so he was on oxygen, and his oxygen saturation got low. Well, when your oxygen saturation gets low, you got loopy—it’s like you’ve been drinking.

And so my dad was wandering around the house singing, “All the girls are wild simply wild over me.”

And he sat down and he goes, “Did I ever tell you I was a Deejay?”

And I went “No!”

And he says “Yep, during World War 2. Worked at the NCO Club. I was a deejay.”

He told me this whole story about being a deejay at the NCO club. Dad’s brother-in-law was in a band. Dad would go and change out the records at the NCO clubs—the Non commissioned officer clubs.

At that time the NCO clubs were segregated. So he would be changing out the records not only in the white men’s NCO clubs, but also in the black officers NCO clubs. He would go and give the records from the black NCO clubs to his brother-in-law who was copying the styles. My father’s brother-in-law was name withheld by request , and he was the drummer for a musician who greatly influenced the direction of rock and roll (name withheld by request.)

So that’s one of my family stories.

Family Oral History Using Digital Tools: Wow. Now, when you sat down with your dad, did you say “Tell me stories.” Did you record it? Did you have a tape recorder, did you—

Kim von Aspern-Parker: I did use prompts every time I talked to him. I used the book To Our Children’s Children. I love the questions in that book. And it would get them talking. Plus, since my degree was in journalism, I have a little bit more background on knowing how to ask questions. So you don’t ask questions that somebody could answer yes or no to, like,

“Do you know who your grandfather is?”

“Yes”

(pause)

“Do you want to share that information?”

So I would ask questions like “What is the best practical joke you ever played?” Or “What practical joke do you remember?” and then my dad would tell me these wonderful stories about how he was in grade school and they stole somebody’s underwear and run it up the flagpole.

Or I would ask him, “who do you remember from your neighborhood?” and he would say, ” Ok, well, let’s see… across the street was Charlie—he lived here” and it led to my father drawing out an entire diagram of his neighborhood. Which is invaluable for me as a genealogist—now you know who lived where when you get that census. And you have stories for each person.

“Oh, Charlie was my best friend. We used to dig up worms together and we used to go down to the lake and fish.”

And so it would lead to stories like that my dad would share with me. Those are invaluable to me. I taped all of them—

FOHUDT: Cassette tapes?

KvAP: Yes, cassette tapes. That was back in the day.

FOHUDT: How long ago was this?

Kim von Aspern-Parker: I started to interview my dad in 1982, I think. It was over a considerable amount of time. He passed away in 2001. So every year or so, I would take a day or two and ask him to tell me stories.

I really am sad that I didn’t tape the stories that were at Christmastime and stuff like that, when we were just sitting down and he’d just start talking, and I didn’t have anything with me that I could pull out [to start recording] and say, “wai—wai—wait, say that again.”

Maybe you shouldn’t bring out a genealogy chart

My aunt in Florida is 90, and I just visited her, and I wanted her to tell me family stories. And every time I would pull out the chart and say, “Okay, so what do you remember about your grandfather Henry Landry?” she’d say, “Ah. They’re all dead people, I don’t want to talk about them. They’re just all dead people.”

So I got in the habit of taking my tape recorder with me. And I had just a little handheld digital—and I’d bring out my phone and my notebook and everything I had—my cup of tea. I just set everything else that I was carrying with me down, and the tape recorder would be on. I wouldn’t tell her anything, I’d just set it all down on the table. And we’d start talking, and I’d say something about—“you remember when you told me the story about Henry, what was that about?—that he had a farm, or he lost the farm, or what?” and she’d go, “Oh!” and she’d start telling me the story.

But if I pulled out the tape recorder and let her know it was on, she would not talk to me.

Family Oral History Using Digital Tools: Did you ever discuss with her the fact that you had recorded this?

Kim von Aspern-Parker: Oh yeah, she knows.

FOHUDT: She knows. Tell me about that conversation with her. How she come to know that?

Kim von Aspern-Parker: Because later I said, “You know, all these stories you’re telling me. They’re all about our family, It’s not so much that they’re dead people but they’re our family.” And I said, “And I didn’t grow up in this family, so I don’t know these stories. So I’ve been taping them so I can have them.”

She said, “Oh, okay.”

She was okay with that. She just didn’t want to talk about dead people. So anytime I’d pull out the genealogy chart, that was talking about dead people.

Family Oral History Using Digital Tools: So the chart equals dead people, versus “oh you know that story blah blah blah,” the “by-the-way”...

Kim von Aspern-Parker:  The by-the-way casual conversation about her father or her grandfather or whatever—that was okay.

Or “tell me a story about your husband who was in the air force and he’s passed on.”

Those were okay: she didn’t mind talking family stories. She didn’t care that I was recording it. She just cared that I didn’t pull out that genealogy chart—that meant “dead people” to her.

FOHUDT: Really!

KvAP: Isn’t that funny?

And I need the chart to keep track of who’s who.

Family Oral History Using Digital Tools: Right. Yeah you kind of have to have your little crib sheet on a small 3 x 5 card. So are those the two people that you’ve interviewed? Have you interviewed other people?

Kim von Aspern-Parker: Mostly, yeah. I have wonderful aunts and uncles that live into their 90s. The problem is some of them love to tell stories. My Aunt Lena loved to tell stories. And she used to put out newsletters every Mondays and she would tell stories about the family. So I have tons of family stories from her that she put out on those Monday messages that she sent to all her friends and family.

FOHUDT: Email?

KvAP: Yeah. She would send them out on email. She sent them out before she died. Now her daughter has a blog and is kinda continuing that. So that’s really fun. We have family stories that come to me from all different places.

Remembering to Listen

I think that the trick is remembering to listen. Not just to know which questions to ask, but remember to listen because the stories happen just in the weirdest times, like people driving somewhere: “Oh, my gosh, that reminds me of the time when—” If you’re just kinda going, Oh, yeah, yeah, okay—you’re not paying attention, and listening, and then expanding on it, saying, “Well, how old were you? What school were you at? Were your friends in on that?” You need to know how to continue the conversation, how to keep it going so that it becomes a whole blown story, and not just a remark.

Family Oral History Using Digital Tools: And that’s something that especially your journalism background has helped you with. Do you think that you already had a sense of that before you got into journalism?

Kim von Aspern-Parker: I think I had a sense of that. I’m nosy. I’m a nosy person, so I had a sense of that beforehand, that I was always asking questions and saying—

“Why did you do that?” or “How come?”

“Well, because my friend thought it was a good idea.”

“Well, Really? if I did that now you wouldn’t punish me, Mom?”

“Yeah, I probably would.”

“Well what made you think it was a good idea then?”

I’ve always been the question person and drive my family crazy. I have that; I think that journalism honed that a little bit. Somebody could develop it if they were interested in the stories. You have to be interested.

Advice

Family Oral History Using Digital Tools: If you had advice for somebody who was starting out with interviewing someone who thinks, “I’d like to do this,”  what one thing is the biggest takeaway or one of the biggest takeaways? (Or, if more than one thing, boil it down to three best bits of advice)

Kim von Aspern-Parker: Don’t interrupt them.

If somebody starts talking to you about a story, don’t get so focused in on the fact that you’re trying to get Grandma’s birthdates that you don’t listen to the story that they’re telling you.

Because a lot of times you’re interviewing somebody and you ask them the question, “Okay, now where was grandma born?”

And they say, “Oh, you know grandma was born in Wichita Kansas” (or wherever), and they start telling you “you know, she told me this time about a tornado she lived through” and she starts talking about the tornado.

Well, now you’re thinking, “yeah, but I need her birth date, yeah, but I need her birth date . You’re not telling me about her birth date .”

You’re missing the story they are telling you about how grandmother lived through the tornado and lost her house (or whatever the story is). And people will tend to interrupt and say, “Okay, okay, tell me about that later, but right now I need—” and you’ve lost the story. They’ll never come back to it. So if they start on something, let them go on it.

My second best advice is pull out the photo album. The photo albums get people talking.

You can see, and ask:

“Well, who’s this in this picture?”

“That’s your grandpa Henry.”

“Well, who’s he holding?”

“Oh! That was the first baby born that year.”

“Who is it?”

And then it starts the story talking about when that baby came to visit and we had a big family reunion and Aunt Sally was there, and that was the last time anybody saw Aunt Sally, she disappeared after that. And the story goes on and on and on.

It’s a story you wouldn’t have gotten if you hadn’t looked at that picture.

Those are my two best ones.

FOHUDT:  Have you seen…

(at this point I started talking about the posts I’ve done on this site about photo albums)

I’ve done a few blog posts about working with photo albums for working with interviews.

What I saw when I witnessed a family interview take place during a holiday visit (the interview was with photo albums).

I share those interviewing with photo-album-lessons again, with better instructions.

In part 2, I have a YouTube movie where we’re going through my interview of my mom with some of the pages from the album. So you can get a sense of how to do it if you’re going to have a recording so that it works.

In the next post—the second half of Kim von Aspern-Parker’s interview:

• More about getting permission for conducting interviews
• The hardest person to interview (and why)
• Kim’s concluding advice for others who want to interview family

The four people:

• Kim von Aspern-Parker of Le Maison Duchamp
• Joan Miller of Luxegen
• Donna Wendt of Another Day With Donna
• Lisa Alzo of The Accidental Genealogist

(Listed in the order I interviewed them)

But first, imagine the following scenario.

You decide to contact the government agency that can give you some vital records for Great Great Great Grandma, which are stored at the Grove County Records. You want her birth certificate and marriage certificate.

The usual procedure for that is to write a request for the information. Maybe they have a PDF form online that you can fill out and print. Or maybe you just write Great Great Great Grandma’s name and whatever other information you have. Along with the request, you write a check to cover the processing fee and mail your request to the Grove County Records Department.

And then you wait.

One day, an envelope with Grove County Records Department return address appears in your mail.

Excited, you tear it open. You are moments away from looking at Great Great Great Grandma’s birth and marriage certificates.

You pull out the contents. Your request form is there with a big red stamp.

Denied.

There’s a handwritten note scrawled at the bottom. It says, “Grove County Records Department just does not feel like providing you with that information.”

Oh, and of all things, they kept the check.

“No way!” you exclaim. “How can that be?! This is a records department of a government entity; they all more or less follow the same kind of procedure. Providing records to people is one of the things they’re supposed to do. They should do this. And they say they don’t feel like it?!? What is up with that? Are they nuts?”

In this scenario, I’ve deliberately mis-matched a request for historical information and a response.

The request: A genealogical vital records request.

The response: A family member’s refusal to record an interview with you.

Got that? The genealogy request receives a response that might happen in an oral history setting. 

The scenario highlights the difference between research for genealogical records and the act of recording family interviews.

Genealogy is more or less predictable

Genealogy is a practice of record-seeking and record keeping. The hunt for records follows a more-or-less predictable path.

There are different document types, and different locations to find them. For each type of document, though, the method you follow to get your hands on the document is predictable and orderly.

The hunt is for the record. The most common types of records are vital records (births, marriages, deaths), court records, property records, records in newspapers, census records, church or synagogue or mosque records, city directories, military pension records, immigration and travel records, cemetery gravestones. The genealogist is on a hunt for records.

(That’s not to say that genealogy research is unaffected by individual circumstance. Variations in name spelling may turn a straightforward search into a daunting challenge. Or it may be that your ancestor’s Grove County Records Department may have burned up in the horrible Grove Downtown Fire of 1926. But an individual fire that destroyed all the records does not change the general method by which you obtain vital records from most County Records Departments.)

Approaching Family Members for an interview: Your Mileage May Vary

A family interview, where one member asks another member to sit down and tell stories, is filled with unpredictable circumstances. Caprice. A certain personality type with certain inclinations. Hidden motivations. Maybe the person will agree to talk to you, and maybe they won’t. It is “Your mileage may vary” writ large.

Here’s my challenge: On this site, I write about “here’s how to do this extremely satisfying process.” But I am one person with one family. I can write about equipment and how to come up with good questions. But for that initial step to sit down and interview someone, how is it possible for me to move from saying “This is what it’s like to talk with my mother” to “What it is like to interview any mother” ?

We’re all different. My mother likes to talk and share. She has no problem sitting with a recorder and taking part in an interview. Not every mother is like my mother, though.

I want to learn from other people’s experiences. What’s it like when you’ve got a reluctant family member? What is it like if someone refuses to be interviewed? What other struggles do people have? What triumphs? What other advice can I give for family situations that differ from my own family? 

That brings us to the experiences of four genealogists at Jamboree.

Each one interviewed family members. Some interviewees were reticent and difficult, some were willing and open. You’ll find different approaches to the question, “how do I get the person to agree to be interviewed?” You’ll find surprising perceptions that seem (appear but really do not) get in the way of the interview. You’ll also learn how they worked around the reaction “OMG! There’s, you know, RECORDING EQUIPMENT, yikes!” You’ll find out what they did with their interviews afterwards, and get some fantastic ideas.

What about you?

In the comments, feel free to describe your own experiences.

How did it go? What did you talk about? Difficulties in getting family members to talk while recording the conversation? If so, what are the issues that make the process objectionable for your relative? Were there any problems or fiascos? Technical glitches? What have you learned from it? Has your relationship with the interviewee changed as a result of the recording?

The first interview, with Kim von Aspern-Parker (Part 1) (Part 2), will begin the series early next week.

It all began at dinner last Monday. The three of us sat down. Before long, the waiter brought us bread. He took a slice, buttered it, took a bite, and chewed it. Then a story came out, about a woman whose house he went to when he was a boy—about, oh, eight years old or so. He liked to be there on the day she baked bread.

He is my boyfriend’s father, Doc M Sr. He was in town for a visit.

He was born in 1926, the year that Winnie The Pooh was published, and Henry Ford established the 40-hour work week. In the year he was born, Moussolini came into power, and Emperor Hirohito ascended the throne in Japan. World War 1, the war to end all wars, had been over a scant 8 years. He grew up during the Depression in California’s inland empire. His family had to move around a lot because his dad did manual labor, and jobs were, well, scarce.

Between ordering dinner and choosing the wine, this story came out. He did some work for her, chores, maybe mowed her lawn. He loved to show up on the day of the week that she baked bread. She offered him a cookie, but he said no, he was waiting for the bread. That smell of freshly-baked bread—mmmmmmmm! To him, she was old. Ancient. When he visited, they’d talk. He asked her questions about her life.

“Did you know anyone famous or important, anyone I might know about or have read about?”
She told him of the Lincoln Douglas debate. He knew of Lincoln. He was impressed. What was it like? What did Lincoln say?

“‘Oh, I was a young girl, I don’t remember anything that Mr. Lincoln said.’”

Her dad had some political involvement where she grew up—serving on city council or the county government. Her dad had some involvement with putting on this event, which took place on a platform out in a big, open field. She went to the debate with her father. They sat close—either on the edge of the platform, or close enough to have a good view.

In those days if you wanted to know what someone had to say, you went there to witness the event, to hear the person’s words. You didn’t watch it on TV afterwards. You could read about it in the paper, but if you wanted to hear and see it for yourself, you had to go there.  (In fact, one thing Doc M Sr mentioned during his visit was liking to go to the movies to see the newsreels—it was the first time he got a picture of the people he’d heard about or had read about.)

There it was. A cool story. Very unexpected. An eyewitness to history. Though Doc M Sr thought she was ancient, we calculated. Let’s say she was around 8 years old when the debates took place, that’d mean she was born around 1850. So in 1934 or so when Doc M Sr was 8, that’s make her roughly 84 years old. Doc M Sr. is himself 84 years old. I am two people removed from an eyewitness to Lincoln. Two 84-year old people.

What’s there to learn from it? It is enough to marvel at the connection, to trace back to Lincoln through two people. There’s more to it than that:

1. The news is full of 150 years since start of Civil War stories. With all the news commemorating the 150th anniversary of the start of the Civil War, 150 years ago is not that long ago—it’s two long lifespans, back to back, with a little overlap.
2. Add another item to your interview tips and tricks: Who told you stories about things they had seen? What did they tell you? What stories did you hear about from your elders? This goes further back beyond the things you did or the things you witnessed. 
3. You never know what will elicit a story. This story did not come in response to a question. It came from freshly baked bread. Doc M Sr. remembered when this memory was triggered by another occasion where he had freshly-baked bread.

Here’s a little foretaste of the audio we will work with at the workshop, which takes place in a week and a half in Little Tokyo, Los Angeles.

And yes, you can still register!!

Here are some photos from the interview (during the last days of 2010), and four short edited audio excerpts. 

In the FIRST AUDIO RECORDING [MP3, 1:07], Rachel describes the background—how she’s related to Enrico Fermi, and what she was told about him when she was young. (Although she was born in the United States, Rachel grew up in Cambridge, England.)

“I was told a little bit about my grandfather. I knew that he was a physicist, and I knew that he’d won a Nobel Prize. But as I was growing up, I didn’t really understand what a Nobel Prize was.”

SECOND AUDIO RECORDING [MP3, 2:55]:  Rachel describes how she discovered the color snapshot of the mushroom cloud from the first atomic bomb explosion in a box of family photographs.

“And in this shoe box of pictures—you know, full of the normal stuff like babies, picnics, those kinds of things—there was this little tiny faded red photograph with a tiny little sort of cream-colored mushroom cloud in the middle of it. And I was like, ‘Oh my god—what is this?’”

If you have time to listen to one recording, listen to this.

(The explosion: the Trinity Test, July 16, 1945. This was about three weeks before the bombing of Hiroshima)
 

The discovery of these two photos launched a major research project. If there were photographs of the Manhattan Project in her own family collection, what about the collections of other people who were involved with the project? 

In the THIRD AUDIO RECORDING [MP3, 2:55], Rachel describes the research process, and the kinds of images they found. In addition to official documentation photographs, there were candid family snapshots and PR photographs.

“As we were doing more and more research, we realized that the Manhattan Project wasn’t in just one location. The two other main locations were Hanford, Washington and Oak Ridge, Tennessee. And so there were sort of secret towns set up in both those places where people were working on building the first atomic bombs without even knowing what they were working on. And also what was interesting is that a lot of the time people weren’t supposed to be taking photographs. But people are bringing up families and living their lives in these places, so of course they’re taking pictures.”

In the FOURTH AUDIO RECORDING [MP3, 2:02], Rachel touches on the people she met (people with first-hand experience working on the Manhattan Project), and some things she learned about her grandfather.

“I understood better how the first self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction in Chicago really opened the gate. And that code word, ‘The Italian Navigator has landed in the new world’—now I really understood what that meant.”

Each conference features a day of workshops, from an introduction to oral history to other topics. This year, there are seven (count them, seven!) workshops. Two different ways to approach project management, taking an oral history transcript to a theatrical performance, a session all about audio and recording. Those workshops all take place Friday, April 1. (No fooling!)

The two days of computer lab workshops: Digital Audio and Digital Video.

There’s a three-workshop lineup that’s especially good if you’re starting out and want to capture the stories of your community: Intro to Oral History and the two project management workshops.

Friday night is a reception and film screening. It’s open to the public. Saturday is devoted to presentations about ongoing work by oral historians. The conference ends Sunday noon, after a Breakfast/Business meeting, a performance, and a general keynote session.

I hope I see you there. Please let me know if you’re coming, or if you have questions.

Interviewing family series

I wrote this series ahead of the Southern California Genealogy Society’s Genealogy Jamboree in Burbank, CA (where I spoke on interviewing family, and digital tools) It’s about different ways to come up with good questions to ask your family member when you sit down to interview him or her.

Three Weeks to Jamboree: Interviewing Family
Curiosity. Non-Judgement. The underlying attitude to everything.

Interviewing Family: Why not Why?
Why is asking “WHY?” not a good idea when interviewing family members?

Interviewing Family: What Should I Ask? Major Life Events
When you think about the major events in a person’s life, the questions start asking themselves.

Also: How family communication can go weird
The research of Deborah Tannen (who shares my birthday!) sheds light on ways things go weird within families.

Interviewing using Photo Albums

More on interviewing family: Very practical tips for when you pull out the photo album, grab the recorder and press “record” while looking through them with someone.

Interviewing while looking at photo albums (Part 1)
How you sit down with the photo album may allow you to get more stories. There’s more to look at than just the photos themselves.

Interviewing while looking at photo albums (Part 2)
I made you a movie! You get to see what it’s like to look at an album and listen to an interview, after the fact. Make sure that you ask enough information so that the interview is helpful later on.

Bonus: Did you like the photo album in the movie? Here’s more of Great Aunt Doris’ scrapbook.

How to get a digital audio recording to audio CD series

When you create a recording on a portable digital recorder, what next? What do you do with it afterwards? This series leads you to bringing it into your computer, making minor edits, and then burning an audio CD. Software required: Audacity, and iTunes. Both freely available for Mac and Windows computers.

From Digital Audio Recording to Audio CD: Part 1 - Audio into Audacity
Getting your audio into Audacity, whether by opening a digital audio recording made elsewhere, or using Audacity to record directly to your computer.

From Digital Audio Recording to Audio CD: Part 2 - Basic Audio Edits
Making minor edits to increase sound level.

From Digital Audio Recording to Audio CD: Part 3 - iTunes and CD burning
Exporting from Audacity, importing to iTunes, burning an audio CD

(yes, part 4 is still “to come.” I know, I know.)

The Portable Recorder I Recommend: Zoom Handy H1

Finally—uncompressed digital audio in a portable recorder that’s available for $99: the Zoom Handy H1 (affiliate link). It creates CD-stereo quality (and higher) recordings, uncompressed WAV format. 2010 is the year this became available for a hundred bucks.

Zoom’s latest recorder the Zoom H1 Handy costs $99; it’s now shipping!
Why all the features of this recorder are so exciting. Plus the recording that got away. (Written before I had one of my own)

Unboxing My Zoom Handy H1 Portable Recorder
Fresh outta the box and taking pictures of it. See what comes in the Zoom Handy H1 Portable Recorder Box Plus a few tips and tricks.

I put this movie together from the audio recording of an interview I did with my mother a few years back. I just started up the audio and we looked through the album in two long sessions. Don’t worry, this movie is much shorter than the long afternoon we spent poring over its pages. You’ll join us as we look at one spread in the album and talk about the photos on its pages.

You get to step into the shoes of someone who comes along later—someone who wasn’t present at the interview—and try to make sense of the photos by looking at the photos.  It’s 4:46 minutes long.

[note: if you are reading this using a feed reader (Google Reader, Feed Demon, Bloglines, NewsGator, Net News Wire, Cyndicate, NewsCrawler, etc.), the above movie will not appear. Please click through and visit this actual post and view the movie. Have troubles viewing the movie? Please let me know in the comments.]

Part 1 of the series—How to seat yourselves for best visual access to the album and the other person’s face.

Also: if you want to view the movie in higher resolution/high def, you can see it on YouTube.

Oh, and are you aware of a holiday tip that’s not mentioned here? Please let me know. I’m happy to make this collection grow to reflect the good advice and suggestions that are out there.

Paula’s Genealogical Eclectica has a list of good conversation-starter interview questions. [via Little Bytes of Life]

I wish I had asked my Grandma Gert what it was like to be 21 when women earned the right to vote in 1922. I would have had asked her mother, Nana, for details on growing up without a mother and why did they leave Canada.

Here are a few of her questions (geared toward the women elders in her family):

• What was it like to make the decision to leave your home country and come to the U.S., Canada, England, or _____
• What was it like to walk the picket line during the ___ strike?
• What were the family dinners like as you were growing up?

National Day of Listening—The day after Thanksgiving is yhe National Day of Listening, according to StoryCorps. (an alternative to that Big, Big Shopping Day)

The Root features an essay by NPR’s Michele Norris—ambassador for the National Day of Listening project. Norris remembers her father carving the Thanksgiving turkey.

He’d hover over the turkey for several minutes, holding his cherished electric knife and humming a little tune to himself before leaning in to apply his surgical skills to our supper. His whistle-while-you-work anticipation was a little ritual in our home, and I miss him so much, it aches during the holidays.

He died back in 1988, long before I married and had children. My kids now know a lot more about my father’s triumphs and his struggles on a life journey that took him from the shadows of the steel mills in segregated Birmingham, Ala., to middle-class life in an integrated Minneapolis neighborhood. Even so, my kids will never hear the sound of their grandfather’s voice because I never recorded him in conversation. That’s a shame. And it carries even more sting because I have spent almost two decades working in broadcasting, first in television and now in radio, as a co-host of All Things Considered.

The Smithsonian Institution’s Photography blog has a post devoted to capturing family memories at Thanksgiving, too.

Personal Historian Beth LaMie offers 6 ideas to stimulate family stories at holiday gatherings. I’m particularly inspired by her ideas to involve people of all ages. I can use that. I’ve heard lots of stories, but once I think about ways to make the old (to me) stories come alive for my nieces, it’s all new again.

#4 Draw from the Hat
Here’s your chance to get really creative. Write a variety of questions onto small slips of paper and put them into a hat or bowl or basket. You can customize the questions to fit your own family or group of friends, mixing serious questions with silly ones. Be prepared to allow guests to switch the question if they are embarrassed or reluctant to answer. Remember that the purpose of the questions is to learn more about them while having fun with everyone.

Now this sounds like a fun thing to do with my 9-year-old niece. She can collect question ideas from everyone. And then ask the questions. Get that storytelling ball rolling.

This is also the first Thanksgiving a year after my dad’s death. Last year’s was not long after his memorial. I think this year is time to start a new tradition.

p.s. see the photo in the header of this site? That’s my nephew interviewing his grandma (my mother). Maybe it’s time to bring on the big microphone again.

In the (currently snowy!) Tacoma, Washington News Tribune, Dorothy Wilhelm recalls a Thanksgiving overseas in Taiwan, and describes her plans for this year’s Thanksgiving to get combined with an idea for getting the youngers involved.

I am planning to try something different this holiday. The grandkids are beginning to express an interest in family history. It’s about time. So I hope to use the time that we would ordinarily spend critiquing the lifestyles of absent relatives to begin creating our own family history.

As one of my sons said, “I’m interested in how we came to be who and how we are. But I suppose one big thing, if it’s still possible to pin down, is when exactly did our various forebears come to America, and why?”

[...] I learned from Lakewood historian Cy Happy that sometimes it’s easiest to start with one single event. Start with the elders at the table. Ask them to recall their first day of school, or the first Thanksgiving they remember. Who was there? Where did they come from? Who were their parents? Choose a moderator and record everything. Don’t get bogged down in the details of what really happened. We do not all remember things the same way.

Maureen “photo detective” Taylor’s November email (scroll down to Gather Round the Table: Family History at Thanksgiving) observes that there are family stories behind dishes, utensils, recipes, and picture-taking (but of course).

Families often pass on furniture, dishes and flatware to descendants.

If you have these objects in your house do you know their history? Do you know who owned them? In museum terms this is the provenance of the object-the whole history of ownership.

She urges you to get a photo of everyone. (in looking for the photos for this post, I re-discovered digital videos that capture A “dogpile” on Uncle T!)

Let’s get downright genealogical. I favor the stories and legends, but Bobbi Holmes at Ancestorsafari. Prepare a “standard questionnaire sheet” and interview the people there—oldest first. You write down the answers, don’t make the person you’re asking do it.

What is your full name and the correct spelling? You may be surprised to learn that your favorite Uncle Ronny is actually named Reginald.

What was the date and place of your birth and marriage?

What is the full name of your spouse, and his/her date and place of birth, death or divorce?

What were/are the full names of your parents, along with your parent’s place of birth, marriage and death?

And, while you’re at it…. Finally, another way to approach Family History. The United States Surgeon General declares Thankgiving Day to be National Family History Day (history? yes… medical history).

Over the holiday or at other times when families gather, the Surgeon General encourages Americans to talk about, and to write down, the health problems that seem to run in their family. Learning about their family’s health history may help ensure a longer, healthier future together.

Take that to heart. Along with the stories that you usually associate with family history. (and aren’t you glad I didn’t find an illustration related to the mouth for family oral history? So am I.)

Happy Thanksgiving.

Photos are a great means of eliciting stories. Photos (and photo albums) also provide a fantastic start on a journey of collecting family history stories.

More than one older relative has replied to the request for an interview with something like—“What? you want to interview me? But my life’s been so normal. So unexciting. What would I possibly have to say?”

That same person who objects to an “Interview” (with a capital I) probably finds it perfectly reasonable to sit down and identify people in photographs. “Why of course I’ll tell you who these people you’ve never met are.” Easy-peasy. Slam-dunk.

Now you’re off and running. Then the person will start remembering, and will tell you about the people and the earlier times.

This two-part series covers some of the mechanics of getting good stories while using photo albums. 

There are more stories than just the photos in the album

During a Christmas holiday trip, I sat across from my boyfriend (Doc M) and his dad (Doc M Sr.) while son and father looked at photo albums and recorded the conversation and stories about what was in them. I operated the audio equipment and kept my mouth shut. Sitting directly across, I watched emotions play across Doc M Sr.‘s face that his son didn’t see. Each shrug, each grimace, each smile revealed that there was an additional story, but those stories didn’t get told.

Let’s all learn from that experience.

The way you sit yourself and your family member down with the photo album may get you fewer or a greater number of stories.

When you sit side-by-side, it’s easy for both of you to look at the photos. That’s excellent for examining detail in the images, and asking questions such as, What is that? or What is he wearing? Where was that photo taken? or What do you remember about him/her (the person in the photo)?

But if you are interviewing a person whose photos appear in the album, sitting side-by-side may get you fewer stories. It’s hard to turn your head to look at the speaker’s face. You may be so absorbed in the photos themselves that you miss tell-tale expressions on the speaker’s face.

If possible, arrange yourselves and the photo albums so that you can both look at the photos and you can see the speaker’s face. When you’re sitting at a 90° angle (in this photo, the women are not quite at 90 degrees, but you get the idea), you can both easily see the photo album. The corner of a dining table is perfect for this kind of arrangement.

That sitting at a corner-angle is perfect for keeping the speaker in your line of sight, too. You can easily look up to see the speaker’s face.

Now that you can see the speaker, look up from time to time to see if there’s a change of expression on his or her face. Once you see a change in expression, you can ask a follow-up question, such as What are you remembering? or You’re grimacing—what are you thinking about? or How did you feel when the photo was taken?

You get the story of the photo—and the story behind the story.

Of course you want to ensure that you get the Who’s who identification of the people in the photographs. Even better is getting stories about what was taking place at the time. Finally, it’s highly gratifying to hear a person’s deeper thoughts, feelings, and reflections about those incidents.

All it takes is a little extra effort on your place to look at both the pictures and the person—and to ask questions when the speaker’s face changes.

Coming in Part 2: another helpful trick to identify the photos in your recording.

The front and back of the product box. No shrink wrap, just a little plastic seal sticker on it.

By the way, we ordered the Zoom H1 Handy Portable Digital Recorder from Amazon and it arrived a day later—sent from a Los Angeles based Amazon Marketplace partner. Shockingly fast, especially for a popular item that’s been backordered. (Now, more are in stock. The affiliate link goes straight to Amazon.com)

Aaaand, now that the box is open, the first glimpse of the goodies inside.

The Zoom Handy H1 comes with the essentials, so you’re not lacking for a memory card or battery, and you can get started right away.

Here is the Zoom Handy H1 portable recorder, the included AA battery and the case with micro-SD card (and adapter), along with a shiny quarter, for size comparison.

One thing that is not included is a pair of earbud headphones (standard with recorders that cost more than this one). I’ve got extra headphones on hand, so it’s not a problem for me. If you get this recorder, be sure to get a set of headphones to go with it. Seriously.

Now that we’ve seen what’s what, it’s time to start putting the power and storage into the recorder and take it for a ride.

Installing The Battery and Memory Card

I insert the battery into the compartment on the back side of the Zoom Handy H1 recorder. The battery cover comes completely off the recorder, so don’t let it get too far away! The supplied battery is a standard alkaline type, but you can also use a rechargeable NiMH (nickel metal hydride) if you choose.

Next, it’s time to insert the supplied 2-gigabyte micro SD card into the recorder. A 2GB card will allow you to store over 3 hours of recordings in uncompressed stereo-WAV format.

Here, I open the door to the memory card compartment. The rigid plastic cover is hinged to the Zoom Handy H1 with a semi-flexible stub of plastic. It’s an improvement over the sister Zoom Handy H2’s rigid door to access its removable memory (my H2’s door broke one of the hinge-knobs). Still, I recommend treating the Zoom H1’s memory compartment door with tender respect.

That micro SD card—the same size as the memory cards you can use with many cel phones—is small!! (The small size is an excellent argument for using a higher-capacity memory card; if you have one higher capacity card, you won’t be as apt to lose it as if you have multiple micro SD cards floating around.)

When I inserted the micro-SD card into the Zoom H1’s memory card slot, I noticed that if I angled the card so it went slightly uphill toward the slot, the card caught at something inside and just above the memory card slot hole. No panic, I just removed the card, made sure it was perfectly flat, and it went in fine. A final push on the card locked it in place in the memory card slot, and I shut the door.

All rightie then! Power and memory are now installed. Now for a check of the directions to see how things work.

The Zoom Handy H1 User Guide

The instructions for the Zoom Handy H1 portable digital recorder all fit onto a single piece of paper. It’s cleverly folded like a map; at each fold, the page tells what topic discussed in that fold/page.

When unfolded, one side of the sheet has step-by-step operation instructions. 

  The other side of the instruction sheet is a reference guide. The reference has diagrams of all sides of the recorder, and describes what each little doodad does.

All the controls for the recorder are switches on the outside of the unit—this is a different approach than other recorders, where settings (for instance, what kind of audio file do you want to create—WAV or MP3—which is selected by software/firmware switches you control by using buttons and the little readout window.)

The documentation is very well executed, a successful example of “less is more.” They’ve seen to the essentials and don’t bog you down with too much inessential information.

Powering it up for the first time

To power up the Zoom Handy H1 recorder, slide the power/lock button toward the bottom of the recorder until it powers on.

(The lock holds the recorder in either ON or OFF position so that you cannot accidentally change its state by just bumping the recorder.)

When the recorder first powers up, the date reads 01/01/10. Pressing that red Record button does nothing. Not a thing. Huh? Time to refer to the instructions.

Aha! The instructions solve the mystery—and this is why the first part of the instructions describe how to set the date and time on the recorder.

The recorder will not work until you set the date and time. That’s an example of good long-term thinking, since the Zoom Handy H1’s internal clock is responsible for assigning the date and time of the file. If this essential step is overlooked, it leads to later confusion (something I’ve seen when I’ve assisted someone else find and display fotos on a digital camera: “Hey, how come I can’t find the pictures I took the other day?” If the camera thinks you took them in 1970, they won’t show up as your recent the-other-day photos.) I applaud Zoom for making the date and time setting essential.

Once I set the date and time, the recorder’s powered-on state changes to ready-to-record. What does ready-to-record mean? The mics are live, and the level meters take a reading of the sound levels that go into the microphone.

I plugged in my headphones while the power was just ON, and I heard sound coming through the microphones. At this point, I could adjust the recording level settings—increase or decrease the levels, or flip a switch to auto levels.

The recorder, powered on and with date and time set, is ready to begin recording.

Press Once to Record

I began recording by pressing the red Record button. Press to begin. Simple. Basic.

After using other recorders (including and especially the older sister Zoom Handy H2) where I need to press twice to begin recording, I much prefer the press-once-to record way. (I’ve made mistakes when using the press-twice-to-record recorders)

Make it easy, make it straightforward. Make it usable. That amounts to making a successful recording. Yes! Finally!

Once recording begins, the red light just below the mics lights up, indicating that the Zoom Handy H1 is recording. In addition, the readout window shows the time-count counting up, showing how much time has elapsed in the current recording.

To stop recording, press the record button again.

The Case, and Handling Noise

The Zoom Handy H1 recorder’s case is plastic. The arching rings that surround (and protect) the two built-in microphones and the plastic case itself will add handling noise, if your fingers are restless while holding the recorder while it’s recording.

Remember my earlier comment about using headphones to preview your recording? That is essential for discovering—before it’s too late—the best way to handle your Zoom Handy H1 recorder so that you hear what you want to hear, and avoid ruining your recording by absent-mindedly over-handling the recorder.

Avoid handling noise. How about setting the recorder down? Sure thing! There are four little nubs on the back side (opposite the readout display), so you can rest the recorder and point the microphones toward the person speaking. Or, if you stand it up on end, so that the microphones are at the top of the recorder, four plastic nubs on the bottom of the recorder will support it in a standing position. Sweet.

There’s a tripod screw on the back side—the Zoom Handy H1 Accessory Kit (which includes case, wall-socket power supply, windscreen, and tripod) is on backorder, so I don’t yet know how the small portable tripod works with it. But I have tried a different tripod—the Joby Gorillapod—and there’s no way to tighten the screw enough to make the recorder sit firmly on the tripod mount.

Less Is More (at last!)

I’ve mentioned less is more and the way that the makers of this little recorder have gotten so many essential things right. Less is more, and the Zoom Handy H1 has been pared down to essentials.

They got things right that were frustrating or irritating in previous Zoom Handy models (the H2). In addition to the memory card door, and mistake-prone press-twice to begin recording, they made the H1 zippier. 

The Zoom Handy H1’s start-up time is much shorter than the Zoom Handy H2 (30 seconds, which can seem like forever!) This recorder’s start up time depends on the size of the memory card installed—the 2GB card is zippy. I have since installed an 8GB card in my Zoom Handy H1. The startup time is longer (but still shorter than 30 seconds). The recording level readout acts as a vertical progress bar, telling you how soon it will be ready to go.

2010: The Year that Portable Recorders Dropped Below $100

And did I mention that the Zoom Handy H1 is just 99 bucks?

99 bucks! Seriously, $99.

It’s a miracle compared to what I saw when I first started following the portable digital recorders. The first one that was available (from Edirol, back in 2003 or 2004, and no longer being sold) cost over $400. That was too much for me.

What a difference most of a decade makes!

Now there are so many portable digital recorders on the market. There are offerings from all the major portable audio electronics players. And some minor players, too. They range in street price from $400 to (wheee!!) $99.

Zoom (and Samson, its exclusive distributor in the United States) broke the $100 barrier. (The Zoom Handy H1 is the fourth recorder offering from Zoom/Samson. The fourth. They’ve had three previous recorders to get it right)

For 99 bucks, you don’t get a set of earbuds, but you do get the essentials—full resolution audio-CD stereo quality sound. Built-in stereo mics. One-touch recording. It’s a stunning achievement. It’s out of the box. It sounds good! And it’s available now.

UPDATE: Later, I got the Accessory Kit for the Zoom Handy H1. Here are some photos of it:

The power adapter uses a USB cable. You can remove the cable from the wall-outlet. The USB cable that comes in the Accessory Kit is only 36-inches long (~1 meter). If you have a spare USB cable that’s longer than the one supplied, bring it with you when you create a recording. You’ll be able to set up the Zoom Handy H1 recorder further away from a wall electrical outlet.

Here is a detail view of the USB cable connectors for the power adapter for the Zoom Handy H1.

Zoom H1 Handy Portable Digital Recorder

Zoom APH-1 Handy Recorder Accessory Package

8GB MicroSD Card (SanDisk)

No one paid me to write about this product. If you purchase it through my affiliate link, you support my ongoing research into the tools and techniques of capturing family stories in digital audio formats.

Background, as stated by Librarian of Congress: A collection of “disturbing anecdotal evidence” described the thread to sound recordings (dating back to the 19th century) came to the attention of Congress, which passed the The National Recording Preservation Act of 2000 (Public Law 106-474). That law directed that the Librarian of Congress “...implement a comprehensive national sound recording preservation program…” and study the issues that need to be addressed in order to preserve our national heritage in sound recordings. This publication is part of the result.

From the abstract:

This is the first comprehensive, national-level study of the state of sound recording preservation ever conducted in the U.S. The authors, Rob Bamberger and Sam Brylawski, have produced a study outlining the web of interlocking issues that now threaten the long-term survival of our sound recording history. This study tells us that major areas of America’s recorded sound heritage have already been destroyed or remain inaccessible to the public. It suggests that the lack of conformity between federal and state laws may adversely affect the long-term survival of pre-1972-era sound recordings in particular. And, it warns that the continued lack of national coordination among interested parties in the public and private sectors, in addressing the challenges in preservation, professional education and public access, may not yet be arresting permanent loss of irreplaceable sound recordings in all genres. [Read More or download PDF at this link]

I have not yet read the report, but plan to do so with an eye to how these matters affect the Do-it-Yourself Family Historian.

It looks to be deep and comprehensive (181 pages). It addresses preservation of public (institutional) and private (that would include the personal family attic) collections of audio. It’s deeply technical, addressing myriad aspects of preservation. It delves into legal matters, and how copyright law makes preservation a more difficult task. Plus, I’m sure that there’s more than I’ve been able to glean from looking at the introduction of the report. 

This and next month are pretty busy for me (I just returned from that wonderful family reunion—10-10-10 was the sequel to our 05-05-05 reunion—and I will be attending (and presenting at) the Association of Personal Historians Conference). So it’ll be a while before I get a chance to delve into the report. If you’re intrigued, by all means, download it and take a look yourself.