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Comments
Susan; What a beautiful story. I did something similar with my grandmother when she was 97 years old. I did a video of the interview. Although it is priceless I realized that I had waited a little too long to do this. She had forgotten many important aspects of her life. Tell your readers to do this sooner rather then later.
Thank you both for your comments. What amazes me about the events of this story (and the writing thereof) is that it’s been a present-tense thing. I’m not reaching into the past to recall the events of a few months ago, or years ago. Nope. It’s blogging, with that immediate sense of five minutes ago (okay, three days ago).
Linda, when I think of how to say “do it sooner,” the most effective way I can do so is by telling a story. I know that if I were on the other side of things—- reading a a story like this, where I’m pulled into the unfolding experience of the “so glad, so glad” narrator, it’d have more impact than any direct exhortation.
In the midst of these events, have I been thinking, Man oh man, I gotta sit down with Dad, Uncle L, Uncle R and…? You betcha! Hmm. Makes me look forward to a lengthy visit with various family over the Thanksgiving holiday.
You write beautifully. As a newcomer let me just say your layout is gorgeous. Secondly that the premise of the Blog itself is an awesome idea. It reminds me of the book & movie “Everthing Is Illuminated”. All stories big and small matter. Real people all have a story worth telling. This just proves it.
Thanks, Kat! I guess I’ll have to read/see Everything Is Illuminated; I missed the movie when it came through. But there’s always Netflix.
This touched me for a personal reason:
I still have a very old answering machine stashed up
over the kitchen cabinet. It was replaced years
ago by one of those telephone/answering machine
combos.
I keep it because on the tape there are the voices
of both my parents. I wish I’d had the foresight
to make recordings of them when they were still
with us.
Bill, it’s amazing what sort of “ephemera” from then is so valuable now.
What’s the tape format? regular cassette? looping cassette? Mini Cassette? (I’m thinking about how to get the recordings off of that tape and into some other form).
On a similar note, I remember how bummed I was to learn that my grandpa’s outgoing message had been erased from the answering machine at the Lake House after he died. It’s not that we don’t have recordings of him (we do), but that his outgoing message was fun:
I can’t come to the fone
because I’m on the throne
so leave a message
at the sound of the tone.
Compliments to you for all your work! I just bought a digital recorder and did some experimenting with it. I had a little girl about 4 or 5 years old tell me some “once upon a time stories”. I took her picture too. Then I transferred the recording to my computer, then to a CD. I was so amazed it worked. I made a copy, put it in a CD case along with her picture. Her parents were so tickled to get it and I bet she will be thrilled to listen to herself. I really want to do interviews with my mom and dad and other family members while they still can remember. Can you recommend a guideline of questions to ask for some good interviews for preserving family history? I know there are several books on the market, but was hoping to find something for free online. Any help you could provide would be most appreciated.
Thanks, and keep up the good work!
Janet
Janet, thanks!! On interviewing: I’ve got a category of posts devoted to interviewing.
If you want a quick one-stop place to come up with interview questions, go to the Storycorps Question Generator. They help you select (and compose) some questions, and then email your list of questons to you.
Also: The Remembering Site has some sample questions to help get you started. The site is the project of D. G. Fulford, who’s co author of the book To Our Children’s Children (a book of nothing but questions to tease out stories.
Oh and Janet… I’m curious. What kind of digital recorder did you get?
I couldn’t spend a lot of money, but I got an Olympus WS-300M. I’m thinking I should get an external mic, but the little recording I first made I just held in my hand and kept it very still, and that worked just fine.
Susan,
I just went to the StoryCorps Question Generator. Thank you for an excellant recommendation! I just printed all the questions. The typeset is large print so it took 13 pages. It’s easy to read though! The categories are: Great Questions, Growing Up, School, Love and Realationships, Marriage, Raising Children, Working, Religion, Serious Illness, Family Heritage, and War. This list of questions is probably plenty, but I did order a book:
Recording Your Family History: A Guide to Preserving Oral History With Videotape, Audiotape, Suggested Topics, and Questions, Interview Techniques by William Fletcher (Paperback - Aug 1989)
Now I just have to weed through all the questions and come up with enough courage to actually do the interviews! It’s a little scary because some of the process could be very emotional.
Thanks for your help!
Janet
Thanks so much for this story. Great website.
I look forward to coming back and reading more. I’m currently working on a spoken word recording project of my own, which reading this has helped push me further along into.
thanks again.
James, glad you stopped by and that you found this story inspiring. Your comment is well timed for me, too. I came back last night after a visit with my dad to record another session for the Veterans History Project, and saw that you’d just commented.
Good luck with your endeavors. Please feel free to describe your project here!
I took an oral history class in college and I loved it. I have done over 10 hours of taping with my parnets and gradparnets. When I was in college we would tape it and then transcribe it. But lately I have been using a web cam. You get both audio and video. I then edit it down. My Grandmother died a about 2 months ago and we play part of the interview at the funnel. It was perfect, everyone loved it.
What a touching story, and so beautifully written things expressed in way that i would say just awesome.
Thanks for post. It’s really imformative stuff.
I really like to read.Hope to learn a lot and have a nice experience here! my best regards guys!