Life Story Links: April 7, 2020

 
 

“One voice has the power to forge connections and create a better, more empathetic world.”
—Dr. William Lynn Weaver, StoryCorps participant

 
In this time of sheltering-in-place and extreme social distancing, maintaining connections by good old-fashioned telephone calls is one way to go. Photograph of American Telephone & Telegraph Exhibit at New York’s World Fair, 1939, courtesy Manu…

In this time of sheltering-in-place and extreme social distancing, maintaining connections by good old-fashioned telephone calls is one way to go. Photograph of American Telephone & Telegraph Exhibit at New York’s World Fair, 1939, courtesy Manuscripts and Archives Division, The New York Public Library Digital Collections.

 
 

In the Time of Covid-19

THE QUARANTINE DIARIES
“What makes history is people who write some stuff or keep some pictures,” Mr. Herron said. “This is how we communicate across centuries.”

PERSONAL HISTORY QUESTIONS
I created this guide, 56 Essential Questions to Ask Your Parents Before It’s Too Late, in hopes that more people will use their housebound time to forge meaningful connections with their older loved ones.

ACTIVITIES FOR ALL AGES
Family Search has compiled myriad in-home and online family history activities for families to do together “designed to bridge the distance between loved ones.”

ASKING QUESTIONS
This pandemic is the time to preserve your family’s stories, writes Ellie Kahn, a personal historian in the Los Angeles area. And Arizona–based Olive Lowe of Life Stories by Liv offers four easy steps to use Google Voice to record those story-sharing conversations.

‘RAPID RESPONSE COLLECTING’
“As a historian, you’re always thinking about what’s missing, of what you want to know more about. I think what people will want to know about this crazy time is what everyday life was like, what it was like to live through.” Museums scramble to document the pandemic, even as it unfolds.

FROM AN ARCHIVIST’S PERSPECTIVE
Hat-tip to New York–based archivist Margot Note for highlighting the following articles in her always informative newsletter:

Consider joining Margot’s Facebook community for news of upcoming webinars (she recently hosted the popular “Close Together/Far Apart: Creating Family Archives While Social Distancing,” for example).

 
 

Ah, Memories

IN PICTURES
“Photo albums make me think of family: the big, bulky leather-bound behemoths that Mum whips out at Christmas. They’re time portals I can peer through to see my dad looking like Morrissey in the ’80s,” Meg Watson writes. “Making one for myself was a totally new, and surprisingly emotional, experience.”

ADOPTION JOURNEY BOOK
For adoptive parents interested in preserving memories of their journey, here is a road map for what to save, how to record memories, and when to begin compiling everything into a book.

HOME & AWAY
In her new memoir, Always Home, Fanny Singer writes about her “uniquely delicious childhood” as daughter of food icon Alice Waters. Now she ponders the future of her mother’s restaurant, Chez Panisse, and “what can make us feel grounded and sane…at a time so pregnant with precarity.”

 
 

Watch List

TIME TO LEARN
The free video archive of 2020 RootsTech sessions includes discussions about copyright, DNA, genealogy research techniques, and tackling difficult chapters of our family history.

THE WRITER’S LIFE
“I had no idea when I taped this…class that it would be released during a time where we’re living in a great deal of isolation and searching for ways to grow, witness, help, find peace within the chaos,” memoirist Dani Shapiro says. Watch “Writing for Inner Calm: A Mindset, Methods, and Daily Exercises for All” with a two-month Skillshare trial.

STREAMING TREASURES
The Library of Congress “has an extraordinary trove of online offerings—more than 7,000 videos—that includes hundreds of old (and really old) movies,” writes Manohla Dargis, among them this lyrical slice of life in 1948 New York City, “In the Street.”

A few other videos that might be of interest:

 
 

History Made Personal

REMEMBERING OUR SOLDIERS
A 41-year-old bricklayer from the Netherlands turned his childhood passion for World War II history into an act of remembrance lovingly tending the graves of Allied soldiers.

SALVAGING A MUSEUM’S ARTIFACTS
On Jan. 23, a fire gutted the upper floors of 70 Mulberry Street in Manhattan, where the Museum of Chinese in America’s collection was housed. Now, as workers sift through what survived, families are celebrating hundreds of boxes of heirlooms that were unloaded from the building’s scorched interior.

 
 

...and a Few More Links

 
 

Short Takes

 

 

curated roundupsDawn M. Roodecoronavirus quarantine, educational videosComment