Housekeeping

Things about this website

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
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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
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No Jamboree this year (as if you couldn’t tell)

I didn’t make it to the Jamboree this year. Wanted to go to hang with the bloggers. But the weekend of June 28th and 29th was so oversubscribed, it wasn’t funny. I did go to a blogger meetup, tho. But it was local area bloggers. It met in my town. I had to leave early to scan some photos. Which you’ve probably seen.

Posted by Susan A. Kitchens in • Housekeeping
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Family Health Care Time Space Continuum

Another long break. I’m back. (I think.) You know, I talk here of recording family histories, or family stories, but since April I’ve been in a slightly different mode: family medical history. It’s not from long ago; it’s current. And, depending on events (which included nearly 3 weeks of hospitalization or skilled nursing facility-ization), I find myself leaving the land of so-called normal to a different mindset— the health care time-space continuum. That place is highly absorbing, but it’s nothing I wish to talk about here. Hence the silence. (But the patient is home again, which is a nice improvement.)

I suppose if I were to relate it to the topic at hand—recording and preserving family stories—I have two things to say:

Though I have been around family members quite a bit, I find myself with zero interest in doing any interviewing. (well, one channel of my lovely stereo microphone went kaput and I haven’t had the energy or the inclination to even begin troubleshooting it beyond confirming that yes, there’s no incoming signal from the one mic.) No interest.... Read More

Posted by Susan A. Kitchens in • Housekeeping • Interviewing • Personal History
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Reality Intervenes

Fire! No sooner do I get back on this site (and my other blog), but fire breaks out in the foothills. I’m safe. Most everyone is safe, but the terrain is steep. It’s been unseasonably warm here in San Gabriel Valley, and fortunately, there’s no wind. We got ourselves a fire in the mountains, tho. So between local blogging and work I gotta do, I’ll be taking my time returning to normal— whatever that is.

p.s. several days later. I’m fine. I was never close to it, other than close enough to see it when I went outside and looked at the foothills. Fire is now out. I blogged up a storm at the other blog, and have lapsed back into silence for a wee time.

Posted by Susan A. Kitchens in • Housekeeping
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Sneaking back online

I’ve been away for a spell. Now am back. Hello. How’ve you been?

Posted by Susan A. Kitchens in • Housekeeping
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Whoa. Still here?

Hello, again. It’s been a busy week. More posts to come.

Posted by Susan A. Kitchens in • Housekeeping
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All comments to be moderated

I hate to do this, but I’m going to have to change things here so that all comments will be moderated. All comments moderated, all the time. Sorry about that. The incoming comment spam is growing worse. I like it that this site’s software allows for commenters up-thread to be notified when a new person comments on that thread. Comment spam makes that a pain for real commenters, so for now, comments are moderated.

Posted by Susan A. Kitchens in • Housekeeping
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Back from the Oakland Conference

I’m back from the Oakland Oral History Association conference, and overwhelmed with catch-up-to-do. There were too many good panels to attend. Some that touched on the topic of interviewing family, and others on dealing with digital media. I took copious notes (how else do you remember what happened in such a condensed, info-packed place?) and will be offering a couple of posts with session highlights.

Posted by Susan A. Kitchens in • Housekeeping • Oral Historians
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At PodCamp SoCal today

I’ve lots of good stuff in the pipeline for posting here, but I’ve taken my The War intermission a bit early to prepare for PodcampSoCal. Catch up on some of the recent news items, or post in the open thread. There are but 24 hours in a day, and I’m using ‘em all. Back soon with more Latino WW2 stories, Japanese American internment and Go For Broke posts, and digital requirements for submitting to Library of Congress.

Posted by Susan A. Kitchens in • Housekeeping
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Post Expo Finals Week Excusemaking post

The Genealogical Jamboree is over. It’s finals week (been takin’ a class). This post is a sorry excuse for not saying more about the Jamboree or about why the Equipment Guide is still kinda iffy. But there it is. More soon. Tunnel. End. Light.

Posted by Susan A. Kitchens in • Housekeeping
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Hard at work on Equipment Guide

I’m working night and day to create an audio equipment guide for this site. Don’t take this site-silence for lack of activity or thought.

Invitation for the comments: What burning questions do you have about audio equipment? (I’ll save the video questions for later….one thing at a time, one thing at a time)

Posted by Susan A. Kitchens in • Audio • Audio: Hardware • Housekeeping
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22nd Carnival of Genealogy

The carnival is UP!. The theme was Carousel. Or free for all. I liked that. Also found out through Miriam’s Ancestoris “What I’m reading these days” is that this very site is featured in the latest issue of Internet Genealogy. Cool.

Posted by Susan A. Kitchens in • Genealogy • Housekeeping
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Switched Hosts

I just switched hosts for this site. There may be funkiness until things settle with domain name pointing. Comments are disabled on old site, Enabled on this site. I’ll change some settings in the next 12 hours or so to make everything points to the (moved) domain name, and not the temporary name on the new server. Thanks for your patience.

Posted by Susan A. Kitchens in • Housekeeping
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Interviewing, redux

Questions! We get questions. Today, I got a question that went something like this: “Do you know of a resource for interviews? I’m going to interview my parents.” For interviewing tips, be sure to check out the Interview category of posts here. There are a ton, there.

The question also tells me that it’s getting time to do a redesign to make things easier to find here. Any thoughts or suggestions you have about the site, please chime in at the comments. Thanks!

UPDATE: Got a good comment to this post: where to find a list of qusetions? Best and quickest place, hands down, is the StoryCorps question generator.

Posted by Susan A. Kitchens in • Housekeeping • Interviewing
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