Her art installation is a collection of household drawers, scrounged from the post-flood detritus from cleaned out houses. When Napoli returned back to New Orleans after the flood, she was stunned by the silence of the empty city. “I saw these emptied out drawers and thought, ‘Each one of these is a household.’ I began to collect them.” On the back of each drawer, she wrote the address where she picked it up. She couldn’t stop collecting them.

Napoli: “The problem is, where do you save—the first 50 were easy; they went out in the garage—where do you save 700 dresser drawers while they dry out and fall apart?”

How can a person imagine the immensity of the destruction? By taking this regular, everyday household object—a drawer (kitchen drawer, dresser drawer, desk drawer). Put hundreds of them together in one place, place a map on the wall showing the addresses where the drawers came from—all over New Orleans—and let this collection of one everyday thing speak for the destruction and loss of the everyday things placed in drawers. Let this collection speak to the disruption of every day lives after The Flood Came.

Napoli’s collaborator for this project is Rondell Crier. For each installation, they’ve arranged the drawers in different configurations:

When set upright at an exhibit at the World Financial Center in New York City, overlooking the World Trade Center site—Ground Zero, the drawers were arranged like a set of tombstones.

When the exhibit came to the Louisiana State Museum in Baton Rouge, Louisiana,  the drawers were set in one lengthy expanse—a wailing wall.

The exhibit is currently traveling overseas and for the installation in Poland, Floodwall is arranged as a rectangular room.

Opening of Floodwall Exhibit at the National Museum in Wroclaw, in south-western Poland. Image ©Wojciech Gajewski, Used by permission.

The exhibit has an audio component—this is where the oral histories come in. When Napoli and Crier found a drawer’s owner, they interviewed the person about their Katrina experience, about what was in the drawer, and what they lost. Clothes, tools, old love letters, wedding gift placemats (never used). You can play some oh-so-brief audio excerpts on the Drawers and Personal Stories page of the Floodwall site.

Movie about the background of the Floodwall exhibits, with interviews with artists Jana Napoli and Rondell Crier, and a couple of people whose drawers are in the exhibit. The movie also shows the Floodwall exhibit in situ in New York and Louisiana Direct YouTube movie link

Napoli says, “We have a website—floodwall.org—each drawer is pictured on it with the the address where we found it and a space on the side for the owner’s name, and hoping they would tell us their story.” For the website, Rondell Crier created a database for each drawer, with the drawer’s photo and address. On the floodwall website, you can view the drawers—listed by zip code. If you find yours, there’s a way to get in touch with Napoli and Crier, so you can tell your story.

“For many people, this is all that’s left of their entire history of anything that they owned is in this wall. We’re searching America for the people who own these drawers.”

“This wall was built for America, to speak for the silence that there were no words for, and that no camera could grasp. For a loss that we feared would be complete—of a culture that the world seemed to hold dear, not just us.”

The oral histories collected for this project are housed at Louisiana State University’s oral history collection. The next entry in this series about Katrina and the Flood, 5 years later, will visit the LSU collection.

Interview with Jana Napoli. The quotes used here in this article came from this video. (Direct link to YouTube movie.)

Images, from top:
Top of man examining drawer, from floodwall.org’s Flickr photostream.
Image satellite and Flood image, NOAA
Drawer detail, and drawers in hallway, by Scott Beale/Laughing Squid
Top view of Poland exhibit by Wojciech Gajewski
Floodwall front and back side, Floodwall.org’s Flickr Stream.
Bottom image: Same as top.

I got off the fone a little while ago with a spokesperson for Samson’s Zoom line of products, confirming very important items about this recorder. The news is good, people. True one touch recording (press the button and the recording begins). And a zippier start-up time to power the unit on.

Why is this good news? A little background…..

That was then, this is now

Last month, when people would ask me, “What recorder should I buy?” I’d tell them about the Samson Zoom H2 Handy—Samson’s previous lowest-cost portable digital audio recorder.

But I’d also tell them about two of the most significant downsides to the Zoom H2—it takes 30 seconds for the unit to power on, and it has press-twice-to-start-recording. 30 seconds is an eternity, if you’re trying to quickly grab a recording of a conversation in progress. What’s so bad about press twice to start the recording? You press the button the first time to preview the recording audio level, and then press a second time to actually begin recording.

Let me tell you about the recording that got away, while I pressed once, saw the blinking red light, and commenced the conversation. Later (too late), I realized I should have pressed the button again, until the light went solid. It was the gathering after my Dad’s memorial service (which I produced). Fatigued? I was beyond fatigued. Took the recorder out, pressed only once. Ouch. The story I missed was very significant—my uncle telling all the cousins (every. single. one.) of the events surrounding the death of our grandparents. This was stuff I had the wrong idea about for nearly 20 years. Was this important? You bet.

That one missed story convinced me that press-once-to-record is an essential feature for a portable recorder.  Press-twice-to-record is a bad user interface. The more complex, the greater the chances for error. I’ve even recommended a more expensive recorder. (“It costs a hundred bucks more? Well, how much is that one story from my uncle worth to me? Is that story alone worth a hundred bucks? Yes.”)

Now—the Zoom H1 Handy portable digital recorder addresses both issues!

Snappier power-up.

And with that bright red button, press-once-to-record.

All for a hundred bucks.

I can’t give you an exact time for powering up. What I can tell you is that based on a conversation that the Samson spokesperson had with one of their engineers, the startup time is snappier than the Zoom H2. It stands to figure: They put all the functions onto buttons and switches on the outside of the unit. No menu. Which means no having to boot up an internal brain that works that menu. So it powers on more quickly.

When I know the exact time, I’ll update this post. (But as of today, there is only one model of the Zoom H1 Handy in the United States. The rest are on their way here in time for release to the public in 10 days’ time. Looks as though the spokesperson didn’t know the good news—that the units have arrived and are now shipping.)

The Zoom Handy H1: Just the essentials

What else does the Zoom H1 Handy portable digital recorder have?

A Built in microphones in X-Y pattern captures high quality stereo recording. You can also plug in an external mic into a port that looks like a stereo mini port. Or line-in recording from another audio device or mixing board.

Stereo recording? What formats? WAV format (uncompressed audio—which is one of my must-haves) Oh yeah, and MP3. (Don’t use that one). CD-Stereo quality is 16-bit 44.1 kHz. The Zoom Handy H1 will also record in higher quality—24-bit 96 kHz. The higher quality is great for live music recordings, but you’ll do just fine capturing spoken word at music recordings at 16-bit 44.1 kHz.

There’s a tiny speaker on the “bottom” end of the unit to preview recordings. The sound quality of a small speaker will be tinny, but it will tell you whether you got the recording. Extremely helpful.

Battery power: A single AA battery powers the unit. Included, so you can get started right away. (An accessory kit—$25—includes a power adapter)

How does the Zoom Handy H1 store the digital audio recordings? It uses a micro SDHC Card—the same kind of tiny memory cards that you use in your cell phones. Included with the unit is a 2GB card—which will record 3 hours of conversation. Get a larger card, or get multiple cards. (and don’t lose them!)

A USB 2 port allows for a speedy transfer of the recording from the unit to your computer.

The Fourth Time’s the Charm

Zoom has an advantage in producing their fourth recorder—they’ve gotten to learn what are the most important features, and refine the design of the recorder. (Zoom of Japan is the company that makes the unit; Samson in the United States is the exclusive distributor of the Zoom family of digital recorders) Zoom’s first recorder was the Zoom Handy H4, which was followed by the Zoom H2 (I have the Zoom H2; I bought it.). Then Zoom upgraded and re-introduced the H4 as the H4N. And now comes the Zoom H1 Handy Portable Digital Recorder.

The three previous units have helped Zoom to whittle down to just the essentials: Just stereo recording (previous models offered more options for 4-track recording). That speaker to preview the recording. Simplified interface for one button recording so you only need to press once to record. And power from a single AA battery. This is a case where less is more, and the previous models have allowed Zoom to refine the design. Throw in the smaller storage card design, and it looks like a recorder that packs in a lot in a small space.

So now, when people ask me, “What kind of recorder should I buy?” I’ll tell them the Zoom Handy H1 Portable Digital Recorder.

[I have not yet personally tried out the Zoom Handy H1 Portable Digital Recorder. I will soon. I have a Zoom H2, which I bought. No one has paid me to write about this product. I have included an affiliate link so that your purchase helps to fund my ongoing research into the tools and techniques of capturing family stories in digital audio formats.]

Go visit some archives today! To whet your appetite, here are some archives and listings.

The National Archives has a resource center devoted to genealogists and family historians.

Oral History collections, as listed by In The First Person

White House Tapes.
Between 1940 and 1973, six American presidents from both political parties—FDR, Truman, Eisenhower, JFK, LBJ, and Nixon—secretly recorded on tape just under 5,000 hours of their meetings and telephone conversations. The Miller Center’s Presidential Recordings Program is a unique effort aimed at making these remarkable historical sources accessible.

Miller Center for Public Affairs: Search the Scripps Library Digital Archive (audio, video, documents) and just oral history results

Computer Oral History Collection (on the development of the computer) from the Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation (Smithsonian).
All Oral/Video Histories from the Lemelson Center. Includes audio synthesizer, stem cell research, laser eye surgery and more.

Closer to home (my home, at least) and in keeping with the theme, Caltech Oral History archives

Jazz oral histories. Hogan Jazz Institute at Tulane University.

University of California Berkeley’s Regional Oral History Office list of Featured Projects. From Arts in California to Food and Wine to Dr. Atomic (ooh!), Rosie the Riveter, Kaiser Permanente, Oakland Army Base, Suffragists, Venture Capitalists, Western Mining… the list is long and varied.

Oral History Centers and Collections. From the H-Oralhist (mailing list).

Civil Rights Oral History Interviews from Washington State University. This is but one of a number of civil rights oral history collections

The Veterans History Project at the Library of Congress has a page listing other existing oral history projects from WWI to the Persian Gulf War

Did you find something good? Give a shout and say the word in the comments.

[photos by Jim Kuhn/takomabibelot, CC some rights reserved. Detail of two sculptures at the National Archives, Washington DC. View photos (open book) (closed book) on flickr. Click photos on this page to enlarge.]

In her book, I Only Say This Because I Love You Talking to Your Parents, Partner, Sibs, and Kids When You’re All Adults, Tannen gets into the whys and wherefores of communication mixups and cross-signals within families. I’m so glad to have her input on this, because as one individual with one family, I feel very un-credible saying, “Wanna interview family? Do this. Worked for me!” Having her research on conversations within families is very helpful—it helps get me around some of the YMMV - your mileage may vary - circumstances.

Connection vs Control

In my Why not ask Why? post, I touched on her tension between connection and control—everyone wants to be connected, and everyone wants to avoid being controlled, but sometimes, as a family member, you just can’t help but be controlling toward another. And, well, something that one person says with the intention of caring is received by the other as controlling.

When High-involvement and High-considerate people talk together

Another, more general part of Tannen’s body of research involves two different speaking styles.

Both of them have their own internal logic about what constitutes polite speech. They each have their own standard for “how long a pause between taking turns in conversation?” and “what is the amount of loudness or emphatic that constitutes good conversation? Naturally, each style differs from the other. In fact, they clash.

High involvement: Good, polite conversation is one where both talk in quick turns, pauses are short, and you display your enthusiasm and interest in the other person by asking lots of short, machine-gun style questions, and even talk simultaneously. This is the way to be friendly. Silence is not golden. It’s better to hold up your own end of the conversation by talking than remaining silent. They feel free to talk over others, “trusting others to persist or withdraw depending on how badly they want to raise a topic or complete a point.” (Tannen, IOSTBILY, p. 160) Storytelling is a team sport.

High considerate: Friendliness and goodwill in conversation follows a more relaxed pace of speaking, with longer pauses between people taking turns. You do not press yourself on the other person. If you’re just acquaintances, avoid overly personal discussion of yourself. Being indirect is good, because it gives the other person an “out” if the other one misunderstood your question, or prefers not to engage in that particular topic. Being considerate of the other person enables social cohesion. Storytelling is an individual endeavor.

When the two styles talk to one another, watch out!

Members of each group share a standard for what constitutes a suitable pause between when one talks and then the next person talks. Match that pace, and you’re golden. If you don’t, you either feel shut out of the conversation, or end up dominating it.

High-considerate thinks,

“He talked to much, I couldn’t get a word in edgewise. So I was quiet. Then he talked more. So I stayed quiet, and he kept talking.” Or, “I don’t understand why she kept asking me question after question after question, one right after the other. I felt like she was putting me on the spot… or almost accusing me—I couldn’t believe that. How rude!”

High-involvement thinks,

“He didn’t answer my question, so I asked another one. I don’t think he had anything to say. I kept asking questions to come up with one that he would answer. The more I asked, the less he said. He just. wouldn’t. talk. ... he wouldn’t take part in the conversation. How rude!”

Oh, but this doesn’t apply to me, you say. All my family are the same. We have the same style.

Maybe you do, and maybe you don’t.

Here are some regions where each style is known to dominate (not exhaustive; I have pulled this from Tannen’s books)
High-involvement: New Yorkers (City), French-Canadians, Jewish of Polish or Russian descent, Italians, Armenians, African Americans, Russians.

High-considerate: Californians, New Englanders, Midwesterners, England, Sweden, Scandanavians, Irish Americans, German Americans.

It’s all relative. To some Alaskans the usually-high considerate person from California is someone who “talks too fast and won’t let a word get in edgewise.”

So how does this difference work in families?

That’s all well and good. But how about families? Marriage between people with conflicting styles will make conversation among partners and inlaws (and extended family) a task to navigate this difference. Further, regional differences play a part. (I started out life in one area, and moved to another where the dominant style was different than the one my parents have.) This gets played out among generations, too. What was the going conversational style in your grandmother’s era may be different from what you experience now.

How does this affect interviewing?

If you are high considerate interviewing a high involvement person, your task is easier. You’ve already set yourself up as listener. Crank up your facial expressions a notch to match the high involvement “storytelling is a team sport” style. (If you end up vocalizing on the recordings more, well, you’ll have your own voice in the recording more than ideal, but if it makes your interviewee more comfortable, then go for it.)

If you are high-involvement interviewing a high-considerate person, make a decision right now to slow your mind down to a level that will seem painfully slow. Each time you want to ask a question, take a couple of slow breaths. Seriously. Give the interviewee enough time. That amount of time may seem painfully long to you, but for your interviewee, it constitutes a suitable pause to stop and gather thoughts. Ask one question at a time (machine gun style: just don’t do it.)

So, Happy Birthday to the high-involvement style Deborah Tannen from fellow birthday person and the high-considerate style writer of this post. Thank you for helping me understand “how the other half talks” and for giving me a way to share good interviewing advice that applies to more families than just my own.

What about you? Have you experienced this kind of cross-cultural communication in families? What happened? How did you feel about it?

Aaaaaand it’s only a week (+ a day) until the Genealogy Jamboree in Burbank.

My head will be down, completing my two presentations on Interviewing Family—Sunday Morning 8:30-9:30, and 10-11. Between now and then, I’ll be posting some items to the equipment guide section. Until then, check out all the recent goodies on Interviewing in the Interviewing category, or my From Recording to Audio Series (mostly about Audacity and iTunes). Yes, I know Number 4 of that series is not yet up. Seriously, this week and next I need a clone. Number 4 will be appearing in good time.

[Image: Michelle Meiklejohn]

The structure of your interviewee’s life

Image above comes with a hat-tip to my friend Symbolman, who’s animated some stories about life using Symbolpeople. check out Boy Meets Girl.)

The low-tech version uses a piece of paper. High tech version uses a spreadsheet that you can download. 

I’ll use my dad as an example. He’s no longer alive (which is one reason I’ll use some specifics from his life)

1. Create a document with a few columns across the top: Calendar year, Age (how many years old), and then more columns to note life’s events. A column for where he lived, a column for school and work, a column for major life events, and a column for historical events going on at the time.
2. Start by noting the year of the person’s birth. Fill other years below (The spreadsheet does this automatically)
3. Fill in information about locations lived, school, work, relationship and family.
4. Fill in some information about history. What was happening in the world and the nation at the time?

Here’s a table that lays out some events from my father’s life. This demo uses fewer columns than the downloadable spreadsheet, but it’s enough to give you an idea how to create this life structure and work from it.

The high tech version uses a spreadsheet. Download this Excel spreadsheet: lifeform_blank.xls [25k].

Don’t have Microsoft Excel?
This document can be opened in these alternative software applications:

• iWork Numbers (MacOS)
• Open Office, Open source cross-platform.
• Google docs.
  Right now, Google Docs has a “new version”—but this spreadsheet looked weird there. If portions of the headers disappear for you, too, then switch to the Old Version of Google Docs.
  (You’ll need to create a Google account if you don’t have one already. If you have a gmail account, you have a Google account.)

Here’s what the blank spreadsheet document looks like (I uploaded it to Google Docs so I could display it here):

To start working with your spreadsheet, personalize it for person you want to interview.

1. Replace the John Doe name with the name of the person you want to interview.
2. Enter the year of the person’s birth in the blue cell (currently labeled 1930).
   The spreadsheet will automatically calculate the years for the person, for about a 98-year lifespan
3. Enter information into the other columns of the spreadsheet, to begin building a picture of the person’s life.

As you add to this chart, the questions start suggesting themselves.

Question Strategy 1: Generate questions based on the phase of the person’s life.

There are some sample phase of life questions:

• What was your early childhood like?
• What are your earliest memories?
• What were your early impressions of your mother?
• Your father?
• Grandparents and extended family? (Questions about forbearers can also include basic fact-finding about them)
• What is your mother’s name and when and where was she born? (If you’ve been doing any genealogy, you’ve probably covered this base.)
• Can you talk me through a typical day in your childhood?
• Tell me about your childhood friends.
• Tell me about your experience going to elementary school.
• Did you have a favorite subject?
• A favorite teacher?
• Were there any major events in elementary school? Significant achievements? Significant punishments?
• What extracurricular activities were you involved in?
• When you were very young, what did you want to be when you grew up?

As you can see, the list of questions can get pretty extensive pretty quickly. Continue generating them through the course of the person’s lifetime.

First job, military service, dating, relationships, marriage, becoming a parent, raising children, work, accomplishments, job changes, and so on.

There are also other major life events:

• Major illnesses?
• Deaths of family members or others close to you?
• Brushes with the Law?

Question Strategy 2: Tie the stage of life with larger historical events.

This strategy will elicit information that’s both personal (What happened to you?) and a personal perspective on the historical events the person witnessed (How did you experience these historical events?).

In my dad’s case, he was born the year of the stock crash. His early childhood was during the first part of the Great Depression.

• Were you aware that there was a Depression?
• What were the biggest items that stood out to you?
• Did your family undergo any financial hardship due to the Depression?

He was a teenager during World War 2.

• What were your impressions of the war?
• How were you and your family affected by it?
• Did you know people who enlisted or were drafted? What was your understanding about their situation?
• How did your family help in the war effort on the home front?
• What do you remember about ration books?
• Are there any particular days in the war that stand out in your mind?
• What is your memory of the attack on Pearl Harbor?
• What do you remember about VE day?
• What do you remember about the news of the use of the atom bomb?
• What do you remember about news of Japan surrenduring?

More historical events (this list is so not exhaustive!):

• The McCarthy hearings
• Sputnik
• Vietnam
• JFK assassination
• Civil Rights movement
• MLK assassination
• Bobby Kennedy assassination
• 1968 and Summer of Love
• Women’s movement
• Watergate
• Nixon’s resignation
• Oil shortage

There’s a column in the spreadsheet for other events tied regional history: 

• Major weather events?
• Natural disasters? (earthquake, fire, flood, blizzard, tornado, hurricane, volcano)

Local News and Industry

Was the place you were located a “company town”? or “institutional town?”
Were you part of a larger industry that dominated your location? What are your memories of events with that institution?

Some examples:

• A major university
• A company or industry
• A major institution (museum, government entity, nonprofit, professional sports.)
• A military base

What major news about the dominant institution do you remember?

Examples: Strikes, base closings, student unrest or protests, changes in industry, ramping up of work, major layoffs and plant closings, from farmland to urban development, Olympics held in local area, etc.

Strategy 3: Changes in life direction

Look at major life changes and talk about the decisions that went into the change. This is a good way to get a sense of what was happening at the time, as well as the principles and personal values that held major influence in life changes.

Look over the moments of decision and change in the person’s life. Explore what led to changes and shifts in the person’s career, schooling, marriage, divorce, moves, starting a business, leaving a business, etc.

(This is an area where it’s good to remember alternate wordings to the use of Why? as discussed in the previous Interviewing Family post. Remember, you’re aiming for the person to tell you their story. It’s best to avoid any sense of criticism that might seep into your question… You want to know more and make them feel apprecited for sharing the stories of their lives. Don’t make the person feel as though they need to justify their life decisions to you.)

• What led you to go into that direction?
• What were the circumstances at the time?
• What sorts of things were you weighing as you made your decision?
• Was there anyone in your life that was opposed to this move? How did you deal with the difference in opinion?
• What were the results of that change?
• What was paramount in your mind at the time?
• What consequences surprised you after the fact?
• Looking back on it now, what might you do differently?

This line of questioning is also a good thing to have on hand as a follow-up to stories and discussion that you hear.

Finally: Share your resources!

This worksheet/spreadsheet of mine is a build-your-own timeline. Do you use any genealogy/life-history applications or websites that provide you with a similar feature to examine the events of a person’s life? If so, please chime in in the comments and share what you’re using.

Next time, I’ll post a collection of good online resources for filling out your spreadsheet with historical events.

Also, if you have any problems with the spreadsheet, please describe them in the comments.

The form that family history is taking changes with the times. 

Today’s younger generations are more interested in family history than ever before. The whole country is. But they are demanding that those maiden aunts (and all the rest of us who fulfill the function of “family historian”) get with the times. They want their family history accessible and they want it compelling.

Speaking as the maiden single Aunt whose spent a lot of time in the technology industry—I’m even called AuntiAlias—it’s a computer graphic pun (know what anti-aliasing is?), I’m one of those Aunts who is pushing everyone forward in digital pursuits when it comes to family history.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. You gotta use digital tools to preserve your family’s history. I’ve said it so many times before. I’ll say it again, too. But this post isn’t about that.

What I like is the way that Lehman-Shafron draws the picture of how digitized family history is used. By the 500 Facebook friends (in real life) generation. Me—I’m thrilled to get back in touch with my best friend from elementary school. But those growing up never lose touch with their friends.

And what do they have on their computers? Their family history.

Emma Szafranowycz is an example of this new breed of youngster. Age 21 and half-way through her college degree, she is typical of her friends in being addicted to her cell phone and her iPod and her laptop. [...] As her name suggests, Emma’s family origins lie in Europe. And among the endless files that Emma keeps on her laptop, she also has the results of family history research carried out within her family. She has old photographs and old documents and a written history of her grandfather - she has the last words he wrote before he died. She also has a family history video about her grandfather and a slideshow of her grandmother that was prepared for her funeral service.

So, why should you digitize family history? Or oral histories that used to be on tapes, but are now on an iPod? So those who are digital natives can be in touch with the past as easily as they stay in touch with their 500 Facebook friends.

When Emma was at the gym recently she listened on her iPod to audio recordings of her grandfather’s voice talking about his difficult life in Europe and his journey of immigration (he had died more than 10 years ago and his story had been recorded to audio tapes then digitized).

Emma is not that unusual. The next generation are getting in touch with their ancestors and staying in touch with them with a freedom and in a way unimagined a decade ago. It is not so much that this new breed is especially family history minded - it is just that they are especially computer literate. [Read More]

So take it from this AuntiAlias who talks of the how-to for capturing and preserving your history using digital tools. You’re passing on history for the next generations. Don’t be surprised at the way those digital natives use the digitized history you’ve given them.

The answer is not “Because I said so.” But there’s something about that famous familial exchange (“Why?” “Because I said so!”) that gets at the heart of Why Not Why.

Remember the two parts of attitude I mentioned yesterday?

1. Be Curious.
2. Be Non-Judgmental.

Asking a question using the word “Why?” might sound judgemental.

Especially if you’re family.

When a family member asks another family member a question that begins with Why?, it might put the second person on the defensive in the same way as “Why didn’t you take out the trash?”

You want to elicit information and stories, not put the person on the spot.

(I’m indebted to Kim Leatherdale’s comments on the Lifetime Memories and Stories podcast for making this point explicit.)

I’ve gotten lots of insight on communication inside families from socio-linguist Deborah Tannen’s book I Only Say This Because I Love You Talking to Your Parents, Partner, Sibs, and Kids When You’re All Adults. Communication inside families have a tension between what Deborah Tannen refers to as “our simultaneous but conflicting desires for connection and control” (p. 11) We talk to connect and to share our connection with a family member. But we also use language to control the other person. It goes way back to relationships that are very dominant and hierarchical and controlling. After all, what’s more dominant to a young child than a parent?

She continues,

Control and connection are intertwined, often conflicting forces that thread through everything said in a family. These dual forces explain the double meaning of caring and criticizing. Giving advice, suggesting changes, and making observations are signs of caring when looked at through the lens of connection. But looked at through the lens of control, they are put-downs, interfering with our desire to manage our own lives and actions, telling us to do things differently than we choose to do them. That’s why caring and criticizing are tied up like a knot. [p. 13, paperback edition]

Asking a question that begins with Why inserts itself into the nexus of the caring-criticizing conflict. Find a way to avoid getting entangled in the ambiguities of connection-control and caring-criticism.

When you’re engaged in eliciting stories, avoid Why…?.

How to ask a Why? question differently

Instead of asking, say, Why did you change jobs? ask the question this way:

What was your thinking at the time?
What was going on when you decided to change jobs?

The two What was…? options sound friendlier and non-threatening.

If you want to hear a master interviewer whose style is very open and curious and nonjudgemental, I heartily recommend listening to Dick Gordon, the radio host of the public radio program The Story. He’s a master at the curious and nonjudgemental non-Why? question that gets at the reason why. (Plus, the stories on his show are pretty danged interesting, too)

So when you sit down to interview family, think of ways to make your questions 100% curious and 0% intimidating. There are other ways to get at Why without asking why.

Next time…. a way to think about a person’s life to come up with a whole host of questions.

Until then—have you tried to ask a question—a simple basic question—and had your intentions misunderstood? What happened? Describe it in the comments.

“I’m going to interview my Uncle Al. What do I ask?”

I get asked this question—a lot. What do you ask someone that you’re going to visit?

I’ll get more into the specifics of strategies of how to come up with questions to ask, but for now, I’ll give you a few tips on attitude.

Your job as an interviewer is to elicit information and stories from the other person. Period. The rest is just details.

All the pointers I’ll be offering are consistent with your job as story eliciter. (not to be confused with Story Elixer, though perhaps you want your questions to act as a kind of story elixer) The job is to elicit stories. I’ll tell you more about different ways to do that.

Your attitude should be one of curiosity and non-judgement. (Being non-judgemental is especially important if you’re interviewing a family member).

Hat tip to Kim Leatherdale whose advice was included in a podcast by Greg Lawrence at Lifetime Memories and Stories. Kim mentions this at the 5:45 mark. Kim Leatherdale is a therapist (specialist in interpersonal relationships. I’ll be sharing another thing or two from her over the next few days). It’s important, when you interview family members, to establish and cultivate trust with the other person.

How do you do that?

The big game plan: Your job is to elicit stories.

When you think of sitting down with your relative, cultivate inside yourself an attitude of curiosity and non-judgement.

You do that by asking open-ended questions. Those are questions with an answer that is story, explanation, expopunding. A closed question is either for very specific infromation, or for the yes or no answer.

Compare these two questions:

1. When you were a child, did your family take vacations ?
2. What kind of vacations did your family take when you were a child?

The first question is a closed question. Did you…? leads to Yes I did; no I did not. Informative, but not enlightening.
What kind of…? leaves things very open, giving the person the opportunity to answer any way s/he likes. I can almost hear the answer beginning with “Well, my family used to go to…..” and that leads to “My favorite vacation was….”

Open ended questions begin with these words:

• Who
• Where
• How
• When
• What

The next time, I’ll talk about the big exception to the Magic Question Words. I’ll talk about when not to use Why.

Until then, have you had any excellent experiences interviewing family members? What kinds of underlying attitude did you have that contributed to the success of that particular interview?

So who were some of these people who witnessed amazing people and events?

• The last living soldier of the great war
• The last suffragette
• The last pitcher from whose pitch Babe Ruth hit a home run
• The last man to fly with Amelia Earhart
• The last three Civil War windows (one Union, two Confederate)
• The last survivor of the Lusitania sinking
• The last surviving employee of Thomas Edison
• The last man to live in the White House in the 1920s

And wouldn’t you know it? Lutz got his interest in history from stories he heard from his own family.

Lutz, a Maplewood [NJ] resident in his 30s, has always been fascinated with the nearness of the past. As a boy, he listened rapt as his great-grandparents told stories of growing up in Russia and coming to America by steamship, and their amazement the first time they saw a plane.

His great-grandmother was 19 when she married in 1916, and voted for the first time in 1920, the very year women got the vote.

Growing up when planes and women voting were so ordinary as to not even be worth noticing, Lutz was excited by the living history in his own family. [Read More]

The afterward of his book has this gem “We all build libraries of our lives. When an old man dies, a library burns to the ground. Every time one [last leaf] passes, our national memory dims slightly.”

There’s more about the process of putting together this book on the author’s blog at Amazon. He describes interviewing John Coolidge, son of Calvin (from the post “Thank you for the Advice John Coolidge”—alas no direct permalink) and the rediscovery of a quote bore out, in retrospect, a long path to this book getting published.

I saw the folder for John Coolidge, son of Calvin, and I pulled out the paperwork.  He was one of my first interviews, and he invited me in 1999 to visit him in Plymouth Notch, Vermont, one of the most placid areas of the state.  I went into his private house where no one who visits the Coolidge Homestead was permitted.  He was in a wheelchair at that point, and I gently rolled him onto his sun-drenched porch on a beautiful early spring day.  He recounted his boyhood memories of seeing the charred attic timbers in the White House (remnants of the British torching the mansion during the War of 1812) and discussed the death of his brother at age sixteen from blood poisoning.  As I was leaving his home, he wheeled himself over to his desk.  He opened a drawer and handed me a small card with a quote from his father, the President:

Press on: nothing in the world can take the place of perseverance.  Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent.  Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb.  Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.

Why does Family Oral History deal with digital death? The recordings of conversations that are saved in digital formats is the deliberate creation of digital bits that are meant to last longer than the speakers whose voices are recorded therein. It’s an edge-case of the central phenomenon explored at the conference. What happens to your bits once you die?

Here, in no particular order, are tweets from those in attendance, as a kind of thought-piece about the digital lives we have. Plus, for me, having experienced three deaths of people close to me in less than a year (and many more remote as friends’ parents shake off this mortal coil), it’s highly relevant.

• digitaldeathday Secret online lives are often revealed by a loved one’s death. #ddd2010
• digital_beyond Families don’t always understand how digital networks relate to their loved ones. #ddd2010
• digital_beyond What happens when you have a digital life that conflicts with your physical one? Perhaps you don’t want family to know. #ddd2010
• digitaldeathday From @restinpixels sessions “Relative Strangers” explores networks in crisis. Death creates crisis in the networks someone moves in #ddd2010 [Yep. I can personally testify about this, as we who know my friend Cynthia react to her death.]
• ryanthogmartin: Is it possible for your digital content to live forever? #ddd2010
• magzkam : Currently in session on Legal Context: Terms of Use, Service Providers and Digital Death. #ddd2010;
  mazgam: Digital death beneficiaries & trustees? Having a designation as to who gets your data access/control when you die? #ddd2010;
  mazgam: Digital death beneficiaries—would need to be in the terms of service/use ... #ddd2010
• digital_beyond @jtoeman talking about how access to user/pass is key. Slightly different than legal trust model. #ddd2010
• ryanthogmartin: Social media is effecting digital death in a monster way. Crazy and exciting #ddd2010
• magzkam: What are happens to CC licenses when the creator/licensor dies? What if the heirs of the work want to change the license? #ddd2010
• ryanthogmartin : Will our grandchildren be burdened by all of the data and information we leave behind? #ddd2010
• ryanthogmartin : Funeral Directors have a huge opportunity to pursue helping consumers understand digital death #ddd2010
• ryanthogmartin : Is there joint ownership between husband and wife over digital assets? #ddd2010
• nathandosch : Great sessions at #ddd2010. Developing the roles of funeral directors, CPA, attorneys, and service providers in regards to digital assets.
• direwolff: for users’ sake, we need digital assets to be defined as “property” in order for the legal precedents to come into force #ddd2010
• direwolff : sites that keep user info will need to begin considering adding a death policy dictating what happens to one’s info after death #ddd2010
• magzkam : Legal-liability personas: having an identity that can access/use services without having it link back to you. #ddd2010
• AdeleMcAlear: @digitaldeathday Please forward this to the group: In Japan QR Codes on graves http://bit.ly/9lHYXP #ddd2010 [Link goes to this article: QR code graves give a “Memorial Window”]

I’ll be updating this list of tweets; it’s a good baseline set of statements that get at the question, “What Are The Issues of Digital Death?”

Updates done. Found this comedy bit from SXSWi (South by Southwest Interactive). Enjoy.

Countless times in my 30+ years as a reporter, producer, author and teacher, I’ve looked into the eyes of people I was interviewing and realized that they weren’t there with me—they had taken a mental journey into the past. They were somewhere else. I eventually learned to remain as silent as possible so that they could stay in that place—any questions would quickly bring them back to the present.

He goes on to talk about an experience where he was transported into hiw own past, back in Vietnam, trying to save a dog’s life. It’s a story worth reading for its own sake.

The unwritten part of this process for the interviewer is to ask the right kind of question that facilitates the trip into the past. That’s the subject for another post (I’m focusing on interviewing right now, so we’ll examine ways to ask good questions).

Contained in that description is a two-part recognition of the magical, zen place of interviewing.

1. Recognize if the interviewee has gone on a “journey” by the look in his or her eyes. (Faraway look? You know it when you see it)
2. If so, don’t say a thing. Let them keep talking from that place they’ve gone to.

Dollarhide’s Step 1 is titled Family Interviews. Excellent. I agree.

He leads the reader through some strategies to capture facts about your family’s past: Look through address books, holiday cards from relatives. Contact any and all by whatever means possible “in person, by telephone, or e-mail.” (p. 9).

He continues:

Compare your memories with the memories of your brothers, sisters, parents, grandparentss or any other living relatives. You may discover that others in your immediate family have different stories to tell.

Yes.

Memories memories memories. Of the living, of those who surround you.

He further goes on to talk of interview questions, which taken as a whole, are designed to suss out documents. family photo albums, letters, papers, insurance papers. things that will have people’s names. Family recipes. Private papers, journals, records of the family business. The family Bible. Expanding to a wider sphere, find out if there are publications about the family—as in books or published articles.  (Dollarhide, p. 10)

Now, understandably, for the genealogist, the point of the exerise is to suss out places that people have lived, in order to find written records.

So though Dollarhide mentions comparing memories, his aim is to find out all you can, but to aim for those documents.

But I submit to you that there’s more to this first step of interviewing than sussing out who where  and when in order to put you on the hunt for place names and important documents.

Just stop right there a moment, Mr. Dollarhide and you beginning researchers.

Any of those items you’re looking for will probably have a story with it.  Since you’re already conducting an interview, go for the stories themselves. Any bit of information about where the records are will probably come wrapped inside a story.

Please, please don’t be so anxious to learn where that item is (The family bible is on the bookshelf in Grandma’s den) that you overlook stories about it. The stories live in the brains and hearts of people who are currently living, and though there isn’t the same kind of external verifiable records aspect to those stories, they are as worthy of being captured as the place names and dates themselves.

• How did you first learn that we had a family Bible? (so-and-so told me)
• How do you think so-and-so felt about the Bible?
• Who all has possessed it? How has it been passed on?
• Are there any spoken legends about the Bible? Any family rituals about it?
• Any conflicts over it?
• Any time that it was in danger? (fire, flood)

Yes, it contains names, places, dates. But the thoughts and stories about it contain a less tangible sense of significance about your family’s history. You are part of a generation that has the ability to capture the sound of the human voice, and the likeness of a human face talking (and that voice). Recordings of stories is something that you can pass on to the next generation.

Collect the facts. And collect the stories as well.

A

• Above the Trees
• AnceStories
• Ancestors Live Here
• Anglo-Celtic Connections
• Apple’s Tree
• Arlene Eakle’s Genealogy Blog

B

• Bayside Blog
• Before my Time
• Betty’s Boneyard Genealogy Blog
• Brenda Dougall Merriman
• British Genealogy

C

• Census Finder
• Census Tools
• Circlemending
• Creative Gene
• Crowe’s Nest
• Cruwys News

D

• Destination: Austin Family
• Documenting the Details
• Donna’s Genealogy Blog
• Dr. Bill Tells Ancestor Stories

E

• Elyse’s Genealogy Blog

F

• FamHist
• Family, Friends and Neighbors
• Family Oral History Using Digital Tools
• Family Research
• Find My Ancestors
• Find Your Folks
• Free Genealogy Tools
• From Wilno to Worcester

G

• Gena’s Genealogy
• GenDisasters
• GeneaBlogie
• Geneageek
• Genealogy Blog
• Genealogy Canada
• Genealogy Gems
• Genealogy Guide
• Genealogy Lines
• Genealogy in New South Wales
• Genealogy is Ruthless Without Me
• Genealogy Reviews Online
• Genealogy Star
• Genealogy Tip of the Day
• GeniAus
• GeniTales
• Genwriters
• Greta’s Genealogy Blog
• Gus’s Genealogy Blog

H

• Henthorn Genealogy News

J

• Jessica’s Genejournal
• JLog

K

• Kick-Ass Genealogy
• Kinexxions

L

• Lessons from my Ancestors
• Life from the Roots
• Little Bytes of Life

M

• Mad About Genealogy
• Midwestern Microhistory
• Moultrie Creek

N

• New England Genealogy
• Nutfield Genealogy

O

• Olive Tree Genealogy Blog
• Orkneyjar

P

• Patten Project
• Paula’s Genealogical Eclectica
• Practical Archivist

R

• Renee’s Genealogy Blog
• Roots ‘n’ Leaves

S

• Scotgen
• Scottish Genealogy News and Events
• SephardicGen Resources
• Shauna Hicks History Enterprises
• Shoestring Genealogy
• Small-Leaved Shamrock
• Smoky Mountain Family Historian
• Special Collections and Family History
• Staats Place
• Steve’s Genealogy Blog
• St. Vincent Memories

T

• Taneya’s Genealogy Blog
• The Accidental Genealogist
• The Armchair Genealogist
• The Association of Graveyard Rabbits
• The Chart Chick
• The Cobbold Family History Trust
• The Family Curator
• The Genetic Genealogist
• ThePeerage
• The Slovak Yankee
• The St. Leon Family
• ThinkGenealogy
• TJLGenes: Preserving Our Family History
• TransylvanianDutch
• Twigs of Yore

U

• Upstate New York Genealogy Blog

W

• Wandering Genealogist
• Walking the Berkshires
• West in New England

Z

• Zalewski Family Genealogy

“What he did for a living is hard to describe to somebody who doesn’t know his work,” says Simonson, who spent numerous hours with his subject at Terkel’s North Side home—a pack rat’s paradise by the lake. ” ‘He’s an oral historian.’ Well, what does that mean? ‘And he’s a radio man.’ Well, so what? What does that mean? It’s really the force of Studs’ personality that makes him who he was, so I was trying to sift through all this footage to find the most quintessential looks at Studs Terkel and who he was and why it is he meant so much to many people.”

Terkel appears in it (his last interview for the film was recorded six months before his death in October, 2008). The Chicago Sun Times calls it “Disappointingly Short”—a mere 40 minutes.

Simonson was affected by the process of interviewing Studs, and

“Before I worked with Studs, I used to engage in conversation without really thinking about it,” he says. “After I worked with Studs, I’m really aware of the value of asking somebody the right questions in order to get them to open up. Or trying to get them to open up without becoming too personal and understanding that, as Studs said, every life has value, every life has a story worth telling.”

Now, if anyone near me with HBO will just TiVo it, then I’ll be able to see it.

About the Clan McCloud. So you know, McCloud is an anglicization (americanization) of the spelling of the name McLeod or MacLeod.

Oh, that photo at the top of this post? Those are my parents and Dad is wearing what we call the Loud MacLeod tartan—also known as the bumblebee tartan. I can’t say as that tartan goes well against my particular skin tones. I’ve written about my family’s erstwhile and dubious MacLeod connections in my story Not from the Isle of the Lewes. The blood is fake and mythical, but our experience meeting Chief John MacLeod of MacLeod was very real.  Alas, most of my good photos of that trip are all slide transparencies. There is much to scan, and I’ve not even begun.

So, with that as the background, I was amused to see a movie with a story about someone with real blood ties to the Isle of Skye (or Lewis, Harris or other islands in the Outer Hebrides off the western coast of mainland Scotland).

Watch the movie. You’ll recognize the Loud MacLeod tartan.

From someone who has danced on the gunyard of Dunvegan Castle, and has climbed both of MacLeod’s Tables, Hold Fast!

UPDATE: Experiencing technical difficulties with the movie. Am working on it.

From the blog post/announcement of this distinction:

We wanted to identify and give recognition to websites which offered high-quality content, were innovative in topic or design, and which were frequently updated with new content. We also put some emphasis on finding hidden gems in the community, and bringing sites to attention which currently have relatively small audiences. As such, there are a number of lesser-known sites included, and a few more prominent sites unmentioned for the same reason.

Here’s the entire list of the 100 sites. To stay sane, I think I’ll be clicking a few a day over the next several (or several-several) days.

Congratulations to all the others, and join me in a happy dance!

Let me give you a little more from her story, with the quote that makes up the title of this post:

But eventually I got to asking him about his grandfather, who he knew very well – my great great grandfather. As Keith told me about the “jolly” fellow who was my great great grandfather, and then spoke of his great uncles, I was suddenly hit by an amazing feeling – it was like I had opened up a history book and was able to ask it questions.

She goes through all the high points. Of the get around to it to make that call.

Being in her own head while en route. Getting lost. Having misgivings. Regrouping. (deep breaths!)

Arriving. And then the magic when the stories unfold. Comparing the present-day experience now that she’s old enough to appreciate it to the earlier days when these other relatives were the eh, whatevers of life. (The problem with youth is that it’s wasted on the young, the saying goes.)

And then having that realization: This man is like a time machine! Her own, personal, time machine.

And, of course, once she did this, this distant relative was no longer distant.

Brava, Louise! This is why I talk about the process, the tips, the techniques. It’s a life-well-lived, a have-no-regrets philosophy. Once you spend an concentrated amount of time interviewing a family member, you’ll never wonder later why you never got around to it.