Life Story Links: November 19, 2019
How
Do I
Listen to others?
As if everyone were my Master
Speaking to me
His
Cherished
Last
Words.
—Hafiz, “How Do I Listen”
In the kitchen, Hightstown, New Jersey, 1938. Photographed by Dorothea Lange, Russell Lee, Carl Mydans, Arthur Rothstein for the Farm Security Administration. Photo courtesy Library of Congress.
Pass the Gravy, Tell a Tale
#THEGREATLISTEN 2019
Since 2015 when The Great Thanksgiving Listen was launched, thousands of Americans have recorded 100,000+ interviews, providing families with a priceless record of a loved one’s story for future generations to listen to and learn from. StoryCorps offers resources to help individuals and educators transform the holidays into a time of intergenerational sharing.
FOOD MEMORIES, PRESERVED
Launched in time for Thanksgiving host(ess) gift giving, these recipe card sets encourage families to record not only the ingredients and prep instructions for their favorite foods, but the stories behind them, as well.
A Case for Storytelling
GETTING RELATIVES TALKING
In “We’re Losing Generations of Family History Because We Don’t Share Our Stories,” California–based ghostwriter Rachael Rifkin shares her expertise for how to get kids, siblings, and parents talking.
FAMILY LORE
“Telling family stories about crazy Uncle Joe or other eccentric relatives is a favorite pastime when families gather for the holidays. But will squirming children or Instagram-obsessed teens bother to listen?” Yes, says research—and the impact is undeniably positive.
WRITING TO COPE
In The Lost Kitchen, an Alzheimer’s caregiver, Miriam Green, preserves memories of her mother through recipes and reflections. Green turned to writing, including recording family recipes, as a coping mechanism, and learned to enjoy “the present moments spent together.”
Preserving the Past, Uniquely
AN ARCHIVE OF CURIOSITIES & WONDERS
The Public Domain Review is “rocketing the oddities of the past into the present,” including galleries of historical artifacts and images as well as essays putting the various bits of ephemera it spotlights into context. A new book of collected essays is available for pre-order, too.
SAFEGUARDING FRAGILE MEMORY
In anticipation of seeing a screening of Who Will Write Our History at the 92nd Street Y tonight, I began reading up on the film and discovered a most unique historical treasure trove: UNESCO’s “Memory of the World,” which aims to preserve the documentary heritage of the world as a symbol of the collective memory of humanity (the 60,000 pages of eyewitness documentation of the Holocaust known as the Oyneg Shabes, on which the aforementioned film was based, is part of UNESCO’s archive).
HEIRLOOM ARTS
Portland–based personal historian Lisa Kagan announces a winter art workshop for women to “explore what resilience and renewal mean to you in the context of your personal journey.”
Recommended First Person Reads
MINE EYES HAVE SEEN…
“I started to wonder if I could ever give language to my grandmother’s memories across the generations between us. I began to doubt whether I could make my words bring to life all that she has seen, when I have never seen these things with my own eyes,” Julie Moon writes in this legacy-seeking piece.
FIRST IMPRESSIONS
Deirdre Bair, Samuel Beckett's biographer of record, recalls her first (long-delayed) meeting with the notoriously private author in this essay that makes me want to know more about their professional relationship over the next seven years; guess I’ll be checking out her latest book, Parisian Lives, which promises to “reveal secrets of the biographical art.” Listen to a brief excerpt from the audio book here:
ARTISAN OF WORDS
“We weave narratives as we weave cloth, and our words for them are bound together: text and textile share the same Latin root, textus, ‘that which is woven’,” Esther Rutter writes in “Making.”
...and a Few More Links
Eight inspiring immigrant memoirs from Celadon Books
California Camp Fire remembrance book shares “unified experience” of community.
Story Terrace relives their favorite revelations from TV’s Who Do You Think You Are?.
A family, a house, a city: The Yellow House, Sarah Broom’s memoir of New Orleans
Lest We Forget: Keep Their Stories Alive preserves WWI treasures and memories for a British digital archive.
Holocaust survivor and Oscar-winning producer of Schindler’s List dies at 87
Short Takes
