Census 2010: A family history perspective
Pia Lopez of the SacBee opines that the census is much more than How Many People, What Ages are they? She describes all her family history that’s contained in census past. She recounts everything she knows of her family history that’d be lost if a proposed law that asks Just Four Questions Only (name, age, date of response, number of people living in one household) had been in force at the time her ancestors filled out the census. enacted.
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... Read More
Posted by Susan A. Kitchens in
• Genealogy
• History
• Personal History
(1) Comments •
Permalink
How can I help you with your resolutions for 2010?
Happy 2010 to you. My biggest resolution is to help you with your New Year’s resolutions, especially if yours take the form of saying “I really ought to talk to my…” Mom or Dad or Grandpa or Grandma or Aunt or Uncle or family friend. And record that conversation. And then process it with your computer. And then archive it somehow.
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... Read More
Posted by Susan A. Kitchens in
• Do it: Learn How
• Do it: Yourself
• Interviewing
• Personal
(1) Comments •
Permalink
MemoryMiner 2.0 is out!
MemoryMiner 2.0. Cool. Been looking forward to this, and readers of this site’s comment threads have had a slight heads up this was coming. The announcement arrived as I was out of town for the holiday. MemoryMiner’s developer, John Fox, is the digital family photo Santa. I came up with a wishlist of items while working with the till-now current version, will have to download it and check out the new version.
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.
Posted by Susan A. Kitchens in
• Digital Storytelling
• Personal History
• Photographs
(1) Comments •
Permalink
Essential Tips for Interviewing family: Thou shalt not interrupt
Do you want to interview parents or grandparents over the holidays? Here are some tips from Jens Lund — whom I met at the Oral History Association conference in Louisville this fall. As I see it, the problem for the family member interviewer is lack of experience conducting interviews. What one piece of advice would Lund, an experienced folklorist, give to the first time interviewer?
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... Read More
Posted by Susan A. Kitchens in
• Interviewing
(0) Comments •
Permalink
SignOn SanDiego’s Family Holiday Survival Advice
Love this lead-in: “Instead of fixating on how aggravating [family] can be, focus instead on how interesting they actually are.” Thus begins Jennifer Davis’s overview of ways to preserve family stories. [via Randy Seaver’s Genea-Musings]
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... Read More
Posted by Susan A. Kitchens in
• Do it: Yourself
(0) Comments •
Permalink
Genealogy Jamboree in Burbank (June 2009)
Memories of Jamboree, Burbank, California, from June of this year. Image: Footnotes at Jamboree. What fun it was to meet fellow Geneabloggers and hang out. I think I spent more time hanging and talking than I did going to the conference sessions at Jamboree.
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... Read More
Posted by Susan A. Kitchens in
• Genealogy
• Photographs
(7) Comments •
Permalink
MIT class of 1920: A gift in my email
This image is a gift, one I received in an email. My cousin sent it to me a couple of weeks back. Subject line: “Grandma Joe* Graduation Photo.” She went to MIT — Massachusetts Institute of Technology — and graduated in 1920.
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... Read More
Posted by Susan A. Kitchens in
• Letters in the Attic
• Personal History
• Photographs
(2) Comments •
Permalink
Dad Memorial Scanfest, part 2: How we used the images
My Dad’s memorial was filled with photos, dear reader. Filled with them. The memorial was a little over a week ago. Here’s what went down. Here’s what we did with the photos I scanned (as described in Part 1). (I’ll write one more post about lessons learned on a personal level)
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... Read More
Posted by Susan A. Kitchens in
• Personal
• Photographs
(2) Comments •
Permalink
The Dad Memorial Scanfest Marathon
I’ve been on a tear, scanning family photos, for Dad’s memorial — the printed program, slideshow, and to burn on CD to share among extended family. I wrote most of this post when I was near the end of Marathon session #2, over the Hallowe’en/All Saints weekend a week+ ago. Find the album, pull out the fotos, scan at super high resolution. Open Photoshop to crop and/or copy paste just the individual image into its own image file. All of this has me thinking about the best way to share and manage a huge photo collection. This is one of those “thinking out loud” post, most composed 10 days ago, with some follow-up comments from today.
It’s been a month since Dad died, and the memorial is set for this weekend. This has allowed us some time to breathe, and to give family members time to plan a trip here for Dad’s memorial. It’ll be a Great Gathering. The scanfest(s) are to prepare for it.
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... Read More
Posted by Susan A. Kitchens in
• Personal
• Photographs
(9) Comments •
Permalink
One month ago: Hootenanny in the Hospital
This post is about a music-filled night exactly one month ago. But it’s about far more than that. I won’t make you read to the end for the most important bit. My Dad died October 4. He had some music during his final days. One sing stands out in my mind; it took place exactly one month ago. I wrote about it the next day and posted it on a private family blog. I guess I’ll begin by giving some backstory, as I wrote it for those who were already following along:
<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... Read More
Posted by Susan A. Kitchens in
• Personal
(6) Comments •
Permalink
Bizy Backson
I’ve been otherwise occupied for a while. As said in Winnie The Pooh, Bizy backson. A while back I mentioned that I might as well name this site Family Medical History Using Offline Tools, and that is so. My father is reaching the end of a long, long road. He is now at home, receiving hospice care. So. Well. suffice it to say, I haven’t been stoking this site with a ton of new posts and articles.
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.
Posted by Susan A. Kitchens in
• Housekeeping
• Personal History
(1) Comments •
Permalink
Great Grandma’s 1918 Flu letter mentioning Vicks VapoRub makes it into the News-Record
Greensboro News-Record recounts the history of Vicks VapoRub in the 1918 flu epidemic, and I and my great-grandmother get a mention. Vick’s VapoRub was invented in Greensboro, North Carolina.
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... Read More
Posted by Susan A. Kitchens in
• History
• Letters in the Attic
(0) Comments •
Permalink
Not your father’s iPod… well, actually it is (a Walkman)
For Sony Walkman’s 30th anniversary, 13-year old Scott Campbell tries it for a week. Hilarious for us oldsters to see our old fave equipment through a young-person’s eyes.
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,... Read More
Posted by Susan A. Kitchens in
• Audio
• Audio: Hardware
• Digitality
• Longevity
• Memorabilia
(0) Comments •
Permalink
Playing with MemoryMiner export
MemoryMiner and exporting. I’m figuring out how to export a library and then transfer that to my laptop, so that I can show you MemoryMiner if you’ll be at the SoCal Genealogical Jamboree (Twitter hashtag #scgs09) this Friday, Saturday and Sunday. The app is available on both Mac and Windows; I’ve got the Mac version, of course/ The export process isn’t the most obvious, so I’m writing about how I will accomplish it.
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... Read More
Posted by Susan A. Kitchens in
• Family History Software
• How-To
• Personal History
• Photographs
(2) Comments •
Permalink
Family Medical History Using Offline Tools
A that’s a statement of one of the reasons I haven’t been around here as much. Oh, and I’ve been working on other things, too. This’ll change, at least for this week. Flurry of posts to come.
Posted by Susan A. Kitchens in
• Housekeeping
(0) Comments •
Permalink