From my family’s oral history, I knew that my mother’s grandfather had left Ireland for New York in 1893 and that he worked for James Butler’s Irish neighborhood grocery store chain.

But the June 6, 1900, census snapshot fills in a whole lot more fascinating detail. Martin E. Roache lived at 551 W. 152nd St., near Broadway (one block from the Hudson River) in Washington Heights, Manhattan. He was boarding with the Schmidt family.

The husband, age 42, had arrived from Germany in 1875 and was a baker. The wife, age 39, was born in New York, the daughter of a German immigrant and a native-born New Yorker. They had two children, ages 10 and 5. The older child was attending school. A 21-year-old German, non-English-speaking, non-literate immigrant man, who had arrived only two years before, was a servant. My great-grandfather, age 27, was a “tea buyer” by occupation.

The block on which he lived was a cornucopia of diversity. It had Swedish, Irish and German immigrants. It had the children of immigrants. A few people were from Kentucky, standing out among the native-born New Yorkers. Most people could speak English and could read and write, but some could not. In addition to the baker, the block had bookkeepers, salesmen, clerks, a stationary manufacturer, a hardware storekeeper. Many of the immigrants were cooks/nurses/servants in the households on the block. My great-grandfather was the only boarder.

Each census has contained this kind of invaluable information about individuals and about particular places, from the most rural in northern New Mexico to the most urban in New York. [Read More]

If you are given the long form this year, the actual form itself will not be viewable to the public until 2082. Do you think you’ll care about your responses then? Can you think of anyone who’d be interested in that information?

In 2010, I wish to to devote more time and effort to this site than I did the last year, and here’s a toast to the posts, articles, reviews and videos that will appear here this year. I’m leery of getting too specific and too ambitious. (Been there, done that.) What can I write about that will help you?

On my own work with my own family oral histories, I have recordings of my dad and uncle—both veterans—that I want to finish processing and submit to the Veterans History Project.

I’ve got some family photos that I scanned. Or rather began scanning—there are so many more. I want to put them together in a MemoryMiner photo library to distribute to all the cousins (I’ve talked of this before). Wanted to do that in time for the Dad memorial, but the distribution part didn’t happen.

I’ve gotten in touch with two 2nd cousins—each of whom are the recipients of family genealogies—on two different sides of my Dad’s family. I’ve received invitations to share in the info. I’d like to make a bit of progress on that front. Not too much, mind you. Enough Small Progress (any small progress!) that’d constitute a Big Win.

. . . .

Finally, two different looks at the past decade.

Last night brought a somber recollection of the year. 2009 was a hard one for me. This Facebook Status collection (click to enlarge) pretty much tells the biggest of them. Combine that with a Twitter New Year’s Eve trend—the hashtag #10yearsago inspired two tweets about something I’d thought about this past week. At Christmas I remembered my Y2K experience. I was in the mountains. Snowy. Nearly 7000 feet elevation. At the family cabin, a rickety beloved place. 10 years ago I went there with a couple of friends. My parents came up, too. Dad brought his carbide cannon. But right after midnight, when he shot it off, it went boop? (instead of kapow!). I laughed and said, “Dad! That’s the Y2K bug!” Ten years (minus one week) later, on Christmas night, just before midnight, my Mom, two brothers and I tromped through snow to a place nearby where Dad booped? the cannon for Y2K. There in the cold under starry night, with half-moon light casting long fingery shadows of pine trees on the ice and snow, we spread some of my Dad’s cremains in the environs of this mountain retreat.

But also 10 years ago, I was a couple of weeks shy of taking a cross-country trip to visit my grandpa. Who’d been given a tape recorder for his 99th birthday. And that was the beginning of this odyssey of mine, collecting family stories. Memories. Legends. Who-did-whats.

Grandpa is gone. So, now, is Dad. But I have recorded some of their stories. I have the sounds of their voices.

. . . . .

Which leads me back to my New Year’s Resolution theme: How can I help you with YOUR resolution, if you find yourself thinking, “Ya know, I really ought to sit down with my relation and record his or her memories” ?

What would you like to know?

UPDATE: I’ve been taking a look at the demo movie, and I like the things I see in there so much that I’m putting the movie here, too.

Thought this movie is for the Mac version, MemoryMiner is cross-platform. Looks as though, at this point, MemoryMiner 2.0 is Mac-only at this point. I’ll get you more news about any plans for MemoryMiner 2.0 for Windows.

Jens (pronounced yens) Lund, from Washington state, pioneered aspects of creating the driving audio tour. Put in a cassette (this was a while ago, people) at a certain location on a road, drive and play. The tape tells you about what you’re seeing, with significant history and interviews with people from the area. There may be music from local people as well.

Here’s what he had to say:

Don’t interrupt. Give the person enough time. Don’t cut them off. Don’t hurry through your set of questions. Give a moment—a few breaths—at the end of what they say. They may be breathing or pausing before continuing with their story.

I asked him for one piece of advice. I got three good answers. Here’s more:

Know your equipment. Have it as set up as possible before coming in. Minimize fumbling and make the setup time as short as possible.

More. If a person starts to tell you a story before the interview begins (that is, before you’ve set your equipment up and press the record button), tell the person to wait. Lund says to tell them (my paraphrase) “Usually you tell it best the first time, so please wait until I’ve got everything ready, because I want to get it the first time.”

Jens Lund’s advice comes from his vast experience interviewing as a folklorist. The main purpose of the visit is to conduct an interview, so the interviewer comes in, makes small talk while setting up, and then dives right into the interview. A visit to family members is different. There is a larger amount of time spent in The Visit, of which a smaller amount of time is devoted to The Interview.

Here, for example, is a theoretical all-day visit with a 2-hour interview time.

If you are making the interview be the focus of your visit, well and good. Take his equipment/wait, wait! advice as-is. Otherwise, adapt it to your own circumstances.

But his primary piece of advice, Don’t interrupt, is harder to do well and applies in every circumstance you may find yourself in. Breathe. Let the other person finish the thought. Don’t rush.

There are lists of resources, and an overview of the formats.

Alas, this one bit of caution isn’t warranted, really:

Audio recordings are fine but be aware that changing technologies could pose a problem in the future. Just ask any family that recorded their oral history on a cassette tape.

As long as your audio recording is an accepted, well-known format, such as AIFF or WAV, you’ll be okay. Just make multiple copies, burn multiple disks. The biggest risk is data loss.

Davis lists people who provide services and locations for equipment rental and the like. This site has an equipment section that discusses most major audio equipment types. And check out my equipment store, too, which focuses on audio equipment.

Jennifer Davis provides an excellent (and realistic!) piece of advice I heartily agree with—

It’s tempting to think you can get all the work done at this year’s holiday gathering, but experts say it’s better to approach people individually when they are less likely to be distracted.

Yes. And again, Yes. I say this having gathered with lots and lots of family members for Dad’s memorial. The people and their collective memories were gathered, but it was not the time and the place for any in-depth sharing of memories.

But the big holiday family gathering is the perfect place to plant the seed of an idea for a later one-on-one interview.

I began composing this post the day after Jamboree. But then I got sick. All of July I was sick. Then other stuff happened. But hey, I know that today’s the day when plans for next year’s Jamboree kicks off, so what better time to belatedly recall Jamboree last June than today?

I didn’t make it to the Son of Blogger session (exhaustion set in, alas—June had been a jam-packed month), so that event was a micro-cosm of my posting of late (not much, you?)

I did make it to the Geneabloggers dinner on Saturday night, though. And, as you can tell by this image (click to view high rez version), a lot of other Geneabloggers made it, too! (not pictured: Thomas Macentee, nor I)

Here’s a movie wherein we all say hello. And I protect the super secret identity of Ms. Footnote Maven.

The above footnote image, and this grassy image are the way I had fun keeping footnoteMaven’s anonymity. Here her Moo Card hides in the grass of a hotel potted plant. She’s hiding behind it; do you recognize her? Also, can you pick out The Maven’s foot notes in the picture above?

Seriously, it was great to meet all the Geneabloggers. Let me see if I can name them all. Here’s a who’s who at the dining tables.

The left table, starting from top/back row, left to right: The woman with the “put your hands up! Step away from the keyboard!” gesture is named Leslie Mehana of LaDonnaBella. Then there’s a couple, the gentleman is a board member of the NGS, aka National Genealogical Society; the gentlewoman is Pat Richley, aka Dear Myrtle, Jean Hibben of Circle Mending, Diane Wright of Graveyard Rabbit Travels Wright.

Nearer side of left table: Craig Manson of Geneablogie, Illya D’Addezio of LiveRoots.com, my friend Jane Neff Rollins who, now that I’m linking her Kitchen Sink Genealogy blog, might compose her second post!, and Kiril Kundurazieff of Musings of a Mad Macedonian.

Center table: Steve Webb and, standing, Gini Webb (the best! name! ever! for someone who has a genealogy blog); her blog: Ginisology, the stereotype-defying* Elyse Doerflinger of Elyse’s Genealogy Blog, Amy “Rock Star” Coffin of We Tree, George—S.O. of Thomas MacEntee (not pictured) of Destination: Austin Family and Geneabloggers. Running down the right side, I sat on the end, and since I took the pictures, I’m not pictured. Next to me (going from front to back) is Lacey Cooke, her mother Lisa Louise Cooke who runs the Genealogy Gems Podcast blog, Schelly Talalay Dardashti of Tracing the Tribe: The Jewish Genealogy Blog, and Ruth Himan, who, post-Jamboree, created the blog entitled Genealogy is Ruthless Without Me

Table on the right, beginning with those whose backs are facing the camera: Hey, she wanted to be anonymous so if she sorta disappeared in the stitching together of photos, Footnote Maven ought not to mind, right?, Sheri Fenley of The Educated Genealogist, Cheryl Fleming Palmer of Heritage Happens, Elizabeth O’Neal (the most DAR-ring person I know!) of Little Bytes of Life, and Dick Eastman of Eastman’s Online Genealogy Newsletter. Across the table, other side, from farther to closer, sit Liza Alzo, of The Accidental Genealogist, Stephen Danko of Steve’s Genealogy Blog, Drew Smith of Rootsmithing and The Genealogy Guys Podcast, which Drew produces together with George Morgan (sitting next to him), who blogs at George’s Genealogical Gleanings. At the end of the table is Kathryn Doyle of California Genealogical Society and Library Blog, and standing next to her are Randy Seaver of Genea-Musings (without whose notes about the dinner this lineup here would not be possible), and Denise Levenick of The Family Curator.

So there you have it. Belated memories of last June, while looking forward to next June’s gathering of the Southern California Genealogical Society in Burbank, CA.

I have Grandma’s letters that she received when she was at MIT, and one or two photos from that time, but this unexpected one is a beaut.

click to enlarge

Of the 40 people in this photo, Florence, also known as Flossie (upper right)—is the only woman. The photo arrived in email all by itself. The only clues were the file name and the subject line. Other than knowing that Flossie graduated from MIT in 1920, I don’t know much else about this photo. But one good gift leads to another.

I went hunting to see what I could find about the size of the graduating class. MIT Archives to the rescue! The MIT Reports to the President—with reports of student enrollment—extends back nearly 100 years (earliest online version: 1911). To find out about 1920, I looked at the 1921 report (for end of 1920, published at the beginning of 1921).

Is this the entire graduating class of 1920? No. The report of the registrar reveals some—but not all—answers to questions about the photo.

For the 1920 year, the registrar’s report states that there were 480 students registered in the fourth year. Another table listing graduates by years and courses (that is, by major) says that 248 graduated in 1920.

Were the 40 people in this photo classmates in Flossie’s department of Electrochemical engineering? Since only 8 degrees were conferred in 1920, I don’t think so. Maybe it’s a combination of her course of study and another one? I don’t know.

Three other items of note:

Enrollment of women:

Here’s the table showing the enrollment of women at MIT. I’ve highlighted the one woman studying Electrochemical engineering—that’s Flossie. Look at the other areas where women study. More women studying architecture and biology/public health than the other sciences.

Students from Montana:

The registrar has tables breaking down the student population by location. When Flossie first enrolled at MIT in 1916, she was the only person from thes state of Montana. Montana-based enrollment increased from that point. Did Flossie influence others to apply and attend MIT? Possibly. Of the letters from Great-Grandma to her daughter at MIT, there are admonitions to “be sure to visit so-and-so when they come to Cambridge”—perhaps some of those mention those who came to Massachusetts to attend MIT?.

I look at this photo as a Californian in an area with a sizeable population of Asian descent. I don’t give a second thought to seeing so many asian faces in a group photo at a technical educational institution. Oh, those are Asian-Americans attending school. But this is on the other coast, and 91 years ago. The registrar’s report sets me straight. Mostly.

The number of foreign students continues to increase. The first three countries named in the order of the number of students they sent to the Institute last year are China with 40, and Canada and Norway each sending 38. The total from all the countries is 205 or about seven per cent of the student body. Thirty-two countries are represented by our foreign students.

So there you have it. A gift of a photo that leads to a treasure trove of statistical information about MIT, and some hints and morsels hidden in tables about my grandmother’s career when she attended there.

*What’s with the Joe in Grandma Joe? When my cousins were younger, they’d talk to Grandma, and she’d answer them and say, “Well, Joe, here’s what you do.” (or something to that effect). So they took to calling her Joe, and named that set of grandparents Grandpa Joe and Grandma Joe.

The basic workflow of the images was: Scanning app → Photoshop where I did some basic color correction. When I scan images, I make them as big as possible, huuuuge file sizes. The scanner gave me the option of saving as TIFFs, so I did that. Before I brought them into MemoryMiner, I did a batch process in Photoshop to reduce the image size to half of what it was before, which left enough pixels for anyone who wanted to print out a high-ish resolution photo (longer dimensions average somewhere above 1200 pixels.) I changed foto format to high resolution JPEGs because I’m planning on eventually distributing the photo library, and I want it all to fit on a single DVD (capacity 4.7 GB)

I imported the half-size jpegs into MemoryMiner, and IDd the people in the photos and assigned them dates and locations. We had a large and thorough collection for my Dad (you can look at photos according to who appears in the picture). That served as the basis to create two different products—a slide show and a printed program with a full-color photo collage on the outside and inside cover of the booklet. (And yes, this was all done using Macs using basic and professional software tools, so procedures would differ on a Wintel PC, even though MemoryMiner works on a PC as well as a Mac.) 

The slideshow

We opened up Memory Miner and iPhoto and set their windows side by side. In iPhoto, we created a new album for the Dad photos. In MemoryMiner, we clicked the checkbox next to my Dad’s name, to display the photos he was in. Select all photos, drag and drop from MemoryMiner to iPhoto. The next part was tricky, because we needed to move that iPhoto set to my brother’s Mac, so I could continue working on the computer on another project. After a couple of tests, we concluded that my brother would need to rearrange the order of the photos again (gnash!), but he was up to the task.

We had set a time limit of 10 minutes for the slideshow. The final time—12 minutes—was governed by music selections. Bro made a custom iTunes playlist with 4 music selections; it included one song that I’d digitized from vinyl for Dad. There was another song I wanted to digitize from vinyl, but time didn’t allow it. I asked my bro to get it from the iTunes store for 99¢. Bro found the transitions from song to song lacking, so my boyfriend Doc M worked in Audacity to create a special mix of the first three songs (omitting the DRMed iTunes song, which came last in the playlist) to tighten the transitions and lop off some excess to tighten the overall playtime and to fit with the slide selection. My brother did a fine job rearranging the photos to go with the music; there were some great moments there. And the slide show itself was simply wonderful, a real heart-tugger.

The Photo Collages

The second product was two sets of photo collages to be used in the printed program. I built them in Photoshop (I’m an old Photoshop hand, having first used it with version 1.7 for the birth announcement of my niece who’s now a college freshman), and imported each photo as a separate layer in Photoshop. After I got all the photos at the right size and position, I applied effects to each layer to help provide a sense of dimension from one photo juxtaposed with neighboring photos.

But when it came to which photos to include in the collage, MemoryMiner was the place where I selected the images. I scrolled through all the images, and said, “Yes, that one.” But how did I get from looking at the image I want to opening that file in Photoshop? In MemoryMiner, you can see the image’s file name if you point your mouse over the image and wait a long moment for its file name to appear. But MemoryMiner doesn’t start displaying file names until you point to the second image. So point first to the image next to your desired image, and then to your desired image. Wait. A tooltip appears with name. Got that? Now use your computer’s Find command to find the original to open in Photoshop. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Once I’d completed the composite, I imported the image to InDesign where I’d laid out the rest of the booklet (we printed the booklet on both fronts and backs of five sheets of legal-sized paper, which, when stapled and folded, made for a 20-page booklet. The front section was the ceremony itself, and the back section had Dad’s obituary and some additional readings and mementos). The booklet was a definite keepsake. Every copy was gone; no leftovers. In fact, we need to reproduce some more so Mom can send them to friends and relatives who weren’t able to attend.

Oh, and the idea I had of reproducing the MemoryMiner library and distributing it among all the cousins who came to Uncle Bill’s memorial? So much to do, so little time. Many who’d driven long distances took off early early early the next day. Not enough time for me to reproduce the photo library onto disk. It looks like I’ll aim for a Christmas Data DVD delivery, instead.

Stay tuned for post-Memorial thoughts about recording stories and the overall lessons of what happens when media maven producer-type is the daughter of the deceased at a family gathering. That’s a post to come.

Even though Dad’s memorial is a week and a half away, at 2 weeks out I felt the tug of this scanfest project drawing to a close. It could go on forever. Seriously. There are so. many. more. pictures. (And slides. So many slides!)

But there are other things to do. These photos need to be resized from gargantuan full-resolution .tif  or .psd file to high-rez jpegs, then brought into MemoryMiner. Where I identify who-where-when for each photo. (Importing and cataloging over 200 pictures is too much to do in a stretch, so I’ve been taking it in batches)

Being a graphic designer, there are two illustrations I want to make for the Memorial itself—a kind of illustrated family tree, so people attending the memorial will know who’s who. And then a timeline and places that are we’ve been series of photos to illustrate the locales that comprise Dad’s life and our family vacation activities over the years. (Cabin in mountains. Boat; Catalina. Baja California). Road trips. There have to be pictures of the car, stuck in dirt, yes? Except that I haven’t run across those in my scanning. Well, okay, there’ll be a third scanning session, I think. (Update: We’ve reached that critical point where what I’d like to do crashes—hard—into reality and limited time.)

The cool thing about MemoryMiner is that you can identify the most important part of each photo—the people, the place, and the date the photo was taken. Once identified, it makes it very handy for family members. So this Mother of all Scans, Importing and ID-ing will be followed by a library export. The Memory Miner library will export the photo collection and all the information about each photo.  One DVD per cousin Burn the library to data DVDs for people, and hand them out. They will have to get MemoryMiner in order to make sense of it. But the good thing is that once they do so, they’ll want to arrange their own photo collection with the other family members that aren’t in my library. And they’ll have their own photos, too.

This brings up the matter of version control. Once I create and distribute this version, how do I tell the difference between this version and changes I make to it later? I can’t scan the whole of the Major Photo Archive and get it ready in time. I know I’ll do more of this in the future, though. I can see myself, say, next year, wanting to send out another updated “since I last exported” library update to family members. And I don’t think that there is a kind of built-in version control for that. I don’t yet know how I’ll approach this.

One of the reasons why I’m so gung-ho on scanning fotos is that first, the images are great to look at for remembering and reflecting. Second, though, they make great memory-triggers for the oral historian/story catchers in the midst who want to hear other recollections about Dad, and about things that they recall about us as a family.

What about you? Any tricks you have for how you’ve handled a big production for a reunion/funeral/memorial?

<Background>: Saturday, September 26—My Dad went into the hospital—his sixth hospitalization since May of last year. I had been with him Thursday (24th); it took 3 of us to get him from a wheeling walker w/ a sitting seat to his bed; he was too weak to stand. I left the next day; oldest bro D arrived late Friday night (25th) and Saturday got Dad admitted to the hospital. I spent that Saturday afternoon upgrading my ancient crappy cel phone (vintage 2002! spontaneously disconnect from battery at the worst times, rendering it highly unreliable) to a new one with a text-message plan, which turned out to be A Very Good Move in light of what was to come.

Also On Saturday the 26th, R, my next oldest bro arrived to the Homestead (by plane, from NY, pre-arranged flight) and on Sunday morning he and my Mom met with the doctor, who told them that the infection Dad had was difficult, pernicious, and would require heroic measures to treat. “Dad’s backed into a corner,” R said when he called and told me to come down now.

Oh. background to the background: Long before any astro-turf political freakshows started calling such a sane, thoughtful and ultimately kind activity by the insane name of “death panel”, both my parents created medical powers of attorney and advanced directives to spell out what kind of lifesaving heroic measures they did not want performed on them, When The Time Came. And when you’re an adult child working through the channels of the medical system and throwing dice in a high-stakes game where you’re playing against omniscience (“If only I’d known such-n-such…”), knowing that your father doesn’t want to have his life unduly prolonged by tubes and hospitals—he’d rather die at home—legal documents that spell it out is a wonderful piece of guidance to have. 

Sunday the 27th my plan changed from “go down to visit since Dad’s in the hospital and brothers are in town” to “Come down. Now. Urgent.” I arrived at the hospital, Dad was in the CCU—Coronary Care Unit—with several IVs and a mask on his face to help him breathe. One of the IVs carried a drug that brought his blood pressure up to a normal level. Dad was more alert than I’d seen him on Thursday. With Round #6 of hospital (3rd time in CCU), we were getting pretty good reading the vitals on the monitor. That blood pressure medication, though… is a CCU-only drug, and for us, it was keeping Dad stabilized while we all gathered from our various places to, well, bring this different hospital stay to its conclusion. When we went into his room, we had to put on isolation gowns and wear gloves. At first we thought it was to protect Dad from us, but we learned that no, it was to protect us and the other patients in the hospital from the bacteria Dad was infected with; keep it isolated to Dad’s room; wear gowns and gloves and take em off when you leave, and then wash your hands. Brought anything in with you? Clean it with a bleach wipe.

By the afternoon of Monday the 28th, we were all assembled and we gathered around his bedside. We talked of his medical situation and options, and where to go from here. Dad decided, together with us, to go off the b.p. meds (and all IVs) and move him from the CCU to a regular room. At sunset. We said other things; I will not write of them. At sunset the meds were done and they transferred Dad to his new room. Freed of all the IVs and machinery save the oxygen, we wheeled his bed around so he could look out on the ocean and see the sun set.

</Background>

Here’s what I wrote about what took place a month ago tonight. I wrote it the next night, after my Dad had been released from the hospital to hospice care at home.

Wednesday, September 30, written at the homestead: Tonight is a quiet night. The last two nights have been musical.

Monday night (two nights ago), after we took Dad off meds that kept his blood pressure up (and other IVs) and transferring him out of the CCU to a regular room, we sang some old songs.

As afternoon waned, R took his laptop to 1st floor of the hospital where there’s wi-fi and searched for all kindsa songs and lyrics. Scottish songs. Irish songs. Sea shanties.

Search. Find. Copy. Paste (to a Word Doc). Repeat.

He brought the computer to the room, and pulled up the Word lyric doc. And so we sang. A capella. Dad attended, some. When I sang Eriskay Love Lilt—which he’s sung, and we’ve done as a duet more than once—he looked right at me. I wondered if he would try to sing along. No, not really. But he paid attention, from what I recall. Or I guess you could say that he was aware we were singing. Yes, definitely aware.

That was two nights ago.

Last night (Tuesday Sept 29), we were a bit better prepared. For the singing, that is. Mom came home on a break and found a few songbooks. I asked my boyfriend Doc M to come down from the SGV  and bring his guitar for R to play, on R’s last night before he flew back to the other coast.

It was 10 o’clock by the time the hootenanny got going. In a private hospital room. Us in our isolation gowns and gloves. Songbooks. And a guitar. Singing songs that we’ve sung around campfires. Songs that Dad has sung. Oh, we found old favorites, puzzled out the tunes, and sang them. With gusto.

Dad wasn’t paying us much attention; he was looking at his arms, the shirt, the covers, the sheet. Bandages where IVs had been—he worried the bandages. He ran his fingers along folds of blankets, folds of sheet. His fingers searched for I don’t know what. I sat next to him and held his hand. This was not like the last coupla days of hand-holding. (This is his sixth time being hospitalized since a year ago May, and we’ve got the comforting hand-holding part down.) He squoze my hand. Strong grip! He pinched along my fingers same way as he pinched folds of blanket.

We sang. At one point I looked at Dad from the midst of a song that he loves. loved. There were his fingers, worrying fabric of the bed, his bandages, his own fingers. Did he hear the music? Was he aware of the lyrics? No. From what I could tell. We were in the same room. He was surrounded by music and love. But his eyes followed folds of fabric. Hands restless, moving to a different rhythm—one I don’t know about.

This has been surreal, this trip to the hospital. Normal, abnormal. Just like some of the other times at the hospital, but no. This time has been imbued with heightened significance. A different outcome. Like I said, surreal.

When I saw the disconnect between Dad and the songs, the surreal became real. I have never seen him not respond to this music. Until now.

. . . . .

Tonight he’s at home, in his own bed. When I visited him before bed, he was quietly sleeping. No song sing tonight. Exhausted family members are sleeping while M, his evening care giver, stays up late. All night. So we can sleep. The TV’s on in his room. I hear the coffee pot gurgling for M’s long night ahead.

That was Wednesday night, September 30th. We learned when we talked to the hospice nurse that what we’d witnessed during that sing—and further restlessness afterwards are fairly typical for someone who is close to death. After going off meds, Dad’s blood pressure went from normal to a stable, lower place… roughly 70/40. Doc M’s M.D.-friend told him that what happens is that organs shut down, one by one, and that it’s a quiet, peaceful way to go. And so it was. Dad slept and slept those last couple of days, and not long after Saturday night turned to Sunday Morning, October 4, Dad breathed his last.

After Dad’s rough last month, we gave ourselves enough room between his death and the memorial, which will be in a couple of weeks. There’ll be a reunion, all right. When I go down to the Homestead, I’ve been scanning fotos like mad (for a mega slideshow), preparing a singing chapbook for the Bill Kitchens Memorial Sing that we’ll have the evening after the memorial. We’re gathering the guitars. And oh yes, I’m preparing all the audio equipment to capture stories as well as songs.

. . . . . . . . . . . .

Other posts I’ve written about music and family, or music and dying, both of which are totally in keeping with the Music and Family theme of this post:
There is Music—About my boyfriend’s mother’s death.
This Land is Your Land—I thought about a certain banjo when I saw Arlo Guthrie and his son on stage at UCLA seeing Arlo’s Daddy’s song.

I’m going to be attending the Oral History Association annual meeting in Louisville, KY this month. I’ll be speaking there about doing family oral history (don’t take it personally? But I have to take it personally!)

There’s a part where I’ll talk about what it’s like to listen to oral histories after the interviewee has died. As I’ve been putting together the presentation, I planned to talk about my grandpa, and tell the story of my boyfriend’s Mom. But I don’t know that I want to talk about my reactions to listening to oral histories I’ve recorded with my dad—and my reactions to them—in real time.

I did write some reflections and reactions to interviewing Dad… not long after an interview.

A coupla years I came across a letter my Great Grandma Fannie wrote to her daughters Florence and Doris during the 1918 flu epidemic. I was captivated both by mentions of the flu (the letter was written during December, 1918) and tickled by the description of Vick’s VapoRub. You can read the whole thing here and see a page of the letter, and the clippings from the newspaper article, which I transcribed.

Last week, I was contacted by Donald W Patterson from the News-Record, and we spoke briefly about the Billings Gazette article and the letter and my thoughts. I told him more of what I knew, that Great Grandma Fannie wrote her daughters weekly. No, I didn’t know if there were more letters concerning the flu (the letters are not all in order, so there may be more). Yes, I thought the 1918 piece was a puff-piece for Vick’s, the kind of thing that’d make a corporate PR person very, very happy. Patterson, who’s based in Greensboro, where Vicks was founded, rebutted my 21st century media-savvy irony-filled perspective. For a person living in that day, witnessing so many dying of flu, and none of the miracle antibiotics nor miracle vaccines we have at our disposal nowadays, a newspaper would be glad to provide any news about anything that would effectively treat this out of control scourge.

Point taken, Mr. Patterson.

Ah, I’m a creature of the 20-aughts, and have seen many a glowing journalistic puff piece in my day. I’ve heard of too many timid journalistic organs that tiptoe around treatment of the local corporate giant (“We can’t write a piece against BigCo, they say. They’re too powerful to take on!”) Well, this was the series of events that put the name of Vick’s on the map. They weren’t the BigCo at that time. For all I know, they still aren’t. And I, in my PoMo irony-drenched perspective (and hyperbole?) didn’t grasp that.

My squeals of delight at the discovery that the habit of InterCapping goes much farther back than MicroSoft and TechnologyCompanies still stands. Proudly. The rest? A current day person reading old newspapers can stand to take her media savvy glee with grains of salt. Or dabs of salve.

My dad had told me it was the iPod of its day.
He had told me it was big, but I hadn’t realised he meant THAT big. It was the size of a small book.

Size? cumbersome. Handy belt-clip, but with that weight? (you hafta read the article to find out its effect for current 13 year olds).

When I wore it walking down the street or going into shops, I got strange looks, a mixture of surprise and curiosity, that made me a little embarrassed.

Though one teacher got nostalgic. Two tantalizing questions:

How long did it take for Campbell to figure out that there was a side B to this tape?

And how did he create his own impromptu “Shuffle” effect?

You hafta read the article to find out the answers.

A couple of pluses: two output jacks for sharing music with friends, and a power port to plug into the wall.

How I will... notice the future tense. This is still a work in progress.

The photo library dates back some time, and individual photos reside all over the frickin’ place on my computer—some in iPhoto libraries, some in folders each of which representing different scanning session, the most recent of which was an ego-scan session to compile a set of photos of myself for a birthday party invite. The photos themselves are pretty large, if they’re PSD (photoshop) files, because I scan them at fairly high rez. Many photos are over 20MB in file size. The largest, I think, is around 60 MB.

I decided to work with an external disk drive (easy to change from my main desktop computer to my laptop, and there’s extra space on it, too.)

Part 1: The false start (or, what not to do)

Under the file menu of MemoryMiner 1.86 (MacOS), there are a few options in the menu.

At the bottom is Export Library Archive, which sounds like what I wanted to do. So I selected that option, was presented with a dialog box, and watched the progress bar slowly indicate that all the photos had been written.

Allrightie, then, I thought, I’ll go and import it onto the laptop. But it didn’t work; the Open and Import wouldn’t recognize the files. Hmmmmm…. Maybe I should read the manual.

Nope, nothing in the library. Support forums? Nope. Now I know for a fact that the developer, John Fox, is very good with email technical support responses if I were to send him email. But I wanted to see if I could figure it out myself. I found the MemoryMiner demo video page, which has a video devoted to Save Library (3rd from the bottom).

Well, time to start over. And instead of the bottom menu option, try the Save As… option.

Part 2: The successful Export/Save As… process (or, what to do)

So I went back to my main computer, and MemoryMiner. Plugged the external drive back in. (of course, I had to complicate things by reducing the size of the largest of the photos, so that no photos were over 20 MB. Andthat required renaming the originals and then copying in the new ones. I figured—or hoped—that MemoryMiner would recognize the newer, smaller photos the next time it launched.)

In MemoryMiner’s File Menu, I selected Save As New Library. I navigated to a folder near the other folder I’d created, gave my new file a name, and clicked Save. MemoryMiner displayed a progress bar while it saved this second export attempt.

When it was done, MemoryMiner loaded up the new library. I didn’t want to work with the new one, so I closed the app and then disconnected the external drive…. but not before I looked at the difference between my two exports. Here they are in MacOS finder window, annotated.

Click to enlarge

With a single file name, it looks as though it will be easier to open or import on my other computer.

Part 3: Opening library on laptop

Disconnect external drive. Connect it to laptop. Copy file over.

Working on my laptop, I launched MemoryMiner. Here is what a fresh, brand-new MemoryMiner looks like:

Click to enlarge

From the File Menu, I selected Open Library. MemoryMiner presented me with a dialog box. I’m thrilled to report (with a screenshot!) that the second exported library did show up in the file navigation box.

Click to enlarge

Once I selected it, the application cogitated for a bit (this is, after all, a 1.6GB library!), and then everything appeared in the MemoryMiner window:

Click to enlarge

So, there it is. Done!

It’s on my laptop, which means that if you’ll be at the Genealogy Jamboree and you see me w/ my laptop open, I can (and will!) show you MemoryMiner.

And I’m sure there’ll be a small follow-up to this with further explanation about the Export Library Archive and what that’s good for.

One final note: I ended up renaming my big library from SusanExportWithTheLongName.mmlb to the default MemoryMiner.mmlb file name. I replaced the empty, default version that MemoryMiner created on my laptop when I first launched the application.

Link to YouTube video

Many of us have parents and family who are entering the twilight of their rich lives. They have stories to tell — tales of bedazzling beauty and joy, of profound loss and heartache, of the mundane moments that fill the in between. They bear witness to history.

Among Mexican Americans, that history usually gets passed along orally, says Gloria Espitia, a neighborhood liaison for the Austin History Center. The trouble is that most families don’t record the stories of their elders, leaving historians and researchers little or nothing to work with and leaving Mexican Americans missing from the historical record.

Lewiston, New York (near Buffalo): Sharing treasure-trove of Oddities.
The Lewiston Odd Fellows seeks to preserve a collection of historic artifacts collected and stored over a 150-year period. Materials that date back to 1840 hold clues for genealogists and family historians, since there are membership applications (“a great source of names”). This particular site became the repository of archives from Niagara Falls and LaSalle when those lodges closed. Members of the local Arts Council have joined the Odd Fellows to access and help with preservation of the materials. The current “noble grand” who heads the lodge would like to see oral history shared—though it’s not clear from the article whether he means conducting oral history of current living members to augment the historical artifacts, or the written narratives contained among the papers.

Washington, DC. Washington Secretaries Oral History Project seeks interviewees.
Just in time for National Secretaries Administrative Professionals Week. Women who’ve worked as secretaries in politics and government are sought for their recollections. And you know they know more than anyone gives them credit for! Lillian Cox, freelance journalist and former secretary at the White House during Nixon, heads the project.

“Since the 1930s women have been the backbone of the workforce in the nation’s capital,” Cox said. “Many came initially to support the war effort during the Roosevelt presidency and later forged careers with subsequent administrations. My goal is to chronicle the important role these ladies played in American history and politics, a role that in many ways has been overlooked in historical literature.”

San Diego, California. Holocaust survivors, dwindling in number, still have stories to tell.
They gathered for last week’s Holocaust Remembrance Day (Yom HaShoah). More speaking engagements extend through May.

[Deborah Hertz, founder of UCSD’s Holocaust Living Histoyr Workshop:] People will not forget the Holocaust when the last survivor is gone, she said, but hearing one speak “just takes you one level further in your historical empathy, something that’s hard to do with books.”

The New Life Club—a group of holocaust survivors—has lost more than half its members since 2000; remaining members are in their 80s. They gather and tell their stories. They’ve been preserved in a local student-made documentary, and in the Shoah project (52,000+ interviews!), founded by Steven Spielberg and now housed at USC. The article profiles three members of The New Life Club who are telling their stories in events held by UC San Diego’s Holocaust Living History Workshop. Here’s one:

Gussie Zaks tells people how, starving and barely able to hold herself up, she rushed to an unguarded kitchen in Bergen-Belsen, another concentration camp. She stopped when she noticed a man in front of her had blood running from his neck.

She put up her hands, hoping the German sniper responsible for wounding him would spare her. He laughed at her, but he did.

She was 18.

My uncle mentioned that the latest Air & Space magazine had an article on the F105s. I found the article online; hence this link and post.

Other things my uncle mentioned that the article does not:

The tires would last for two flights. Takeoff, land, takeoff, land, change tires. That plane was so heavy on takeoff—what with fuel, external fuel tanks, and the ordinance they had on board, the plane was heavy at takeoff—50,000 pounds. Sometimes they had to rolling at 300 mph before the plane got airborne. Landing, the plane was 25,000 or 30,000 pounds. (I’m reciting the weights from memory; I’d have to go back and listen to get exact figures, but the point is takeoff weight was close to double the landing weight).

He lost half the pilots in his squadron—killed or missing in action (held as POWs). Many’s the time he’d attend a memorial service in the morning and fly a combat mission in the afternoon.

He was damn lucky to make it out himself; he mentioned one time he leaned over in the cockpit just as his plane was hit with shrapnel from an exploding anti-aircraft shell—one piece pierced his headrest. If he hadn’t leaned forward just then, he’d be dead. When he got down, they stuck broomsticks through all the piercings, and looked at where the broomsticks “converged” to see where the shell exploded.

Heaviest. flak. ever. He mentioned those WW2 movies of flying through the air with those lines of upward surface to air fire… and said that what they experienced in North Vietnam was much heavier. The flak was so thick, it was a solid cloud and you could not see the ground.

RK on the tail. In the photos for the article, you can see either an RK or an RE. Those were randomly assigned letters for the aircraft. It so happens that my uncle’s initials are RK. He told a story of going to see the commanding officer after the planes got those tail markings.  He congratulated his CO on his tactical brilliance, etc., etc., for putting his own initials on all the planes. The CO threw my uncle out of his office.

(By the way, check out the comments for the article ... Within the first half dozen or so comments is one from a reader who discovered that “his” POW—he wore a POW bracelet—was of one of the people interviewed in the article and depicted in a picture)

[cross posted at 2020 Hindsight]

Twitter search results for #oralhistory (oral history in general) and #soha09 (the conference twitter feed)

King High Remembers Martin Luther King Jr High School does an annual event of interviewing veterans. Sunday morning, we heard from the teacher, Mr. Corona, who founded the project.

The Eastsiders. A documentary produced by Eighth and Wall.
William Beverly spoke about the project, and showed clips from it.

This is a documentary celebration of the Eastside neighborhood of Los Angeles, down which runs the Central Avenue corridor. From 1920 to 1965, it celebrates Central Avenue with the likes of William “Buddy” Collette and his sextet, Jackie Kelso and Clora Bryant. It also celebrates the multi-cultural make up of the residents of that corridor, many who would never set foot in a nightclub.

• Two Mac Laptops to demo and test all the direct-to-computer tools
• USB mic
• 2 USB Audio Interfaces: Edirol’s and M-Audio’s
• No wait, make that three. Creative Lab’s EEMU USB Audio Interface
• iPod Nano and Belkin TuneTalk, plus Belkin GoStudio. Or, everything you wanted to know about turning your iPod into an audio studio (or quick, stealthy recorder)
• M-Audio Microtrack II Portable Digital Recorder
• Samson’s Zoom Handy H2 Portable Digital Recorder*
• Marantz PMD 620 Portable Digital Recorder*
• LiveScribe Pulse Pen
• Possibly a Tascam portable recorder
 
• My own portable recording kit, as written about here

*A couple of these will be for sale, (very) gently used, in about 3 weeks’ time, once I’m finished with all my equipment tests

I expect to post lots of good info on audio recorders to this site in the weeks following this presentation.

Kevin Roderick at LA Observed mentioned the conference in this morning’s link roundup.