It’s Deborah Tannen Day - or how family communication can go weird
Why is this day Deborah Tannen day? According to Wikipedia, it’s her birthday. Which is the same as my birthday. Yippee! Tannen is the author of the books You Just Don’t Understand
In her book, I Only Say This Because I Love You
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... Read More
Posted by Susan A. Kitchens on June 07, 2010 in
• Interviewing
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Why the Radio Silence? Conference What’s coming up? Conference!
Where did she go? Why all the new posts, then silence? For the last three days I was at a conference devoted to the web software upon which this website is built. Learned many good things that will go into the next major revision for this site. It’s Thursday, but it feels like a Monday after a very long weekend. A verrrrrrrry long weekend.
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.
Posted by Susan A. Kitchens on June 03, 2010 in
• Housekeeping
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Interviewing Family: What Should I Ask? Major Life Events
What questions should I ask? Here’s a strategy for coming up with questions based on what you know about the person. Create a rough structure of the person’s life. List what you know about the person. List what you know about the time period. Look at it and then let the questions suggest themselves.
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)
- 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.
- Start by noting the year of the person’s birth. Fill other years below (The spreadsheet does this automatically)
- Fill in information about locations lived, school, work, relationship
Posted by Susan A. Kitchens on May 27, 2010 in
• Interviewing
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Digital Family History as understood by Digital Natives with 500 IRL Facebook friends
It’s not the same thing as what Ye Olde Maiden Aunt used to collect and curate. An intriguing article by fellow Association of Personal Historians member Jane Lehman-Shafron, she notes the current trends (look! TV shows! Newspaper articles!), but also points out how family history in digital form is being used by the next generation, the Digital Natives who grow up immersed in computing technology.
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... Read More
Posted by Susan A. Kitchens on May 26, 2010 in
• Digitality
• Genealogy
• Personal History
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Interviewing Family: Why not Why?
What’s wrong with “Why?” In the previous post, I wrote about asking open-ended questions, that is, questions that would elicit a lengthy story or explanation. Something more than a yes or no answer. “Why?” is a question designed to get a lengthy reply. So why don’t I say to use “why?”
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?
- Be Curious.
- 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
Posted by Susan A. Kitchens on May 24, 2010 in
• Genealogy
• Interviewing
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Three Weeks to Jamboree: Interviewing Family
Countdown to Jamboree in Burbank, California — Family Interview edition. Rise and shine early Sunday morning, June 13 at Jamboree and learn some good info about interviewing family. I’ll be leading two sessions — one on the skills of an interviewer, the second on the skills of an audio engineer. This week at Family Oral History Using Digital Tools I’ll be discussing different ways to come up with good questions to ask your family member when you sit down to interview him or her.
“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).
Posted by Susan A. Kitchens on May 23, 2010 in
• Do it: Learn How
• Genealogy
• Interviewing
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Survivor meets Oral History
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... Read More
Posted by Susan A. Kitchens on May 21, 2010 in
• Books
• Oral history in the news
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I’m following Digital Death Day today. Remotely
What happens to your bits after you die? That’s the premise behind the Digital Death Day unconference, currently in progress. (On twitter, check out the #ddd2010 hashtag). I’ll be posting provacative tweets and topics here on an ongoing basis.
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... Read More
Posted by Susan A. Kitchens on May 20, 2010 in
• Digitality
• Longevity
• Personal History
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The Interviewer’s Goal: Enabling a Mental Journey into the Past
Stumbled upon this awesome description of The Interviewer’s Dream Moment, posted by Don Ray. It’s part of the setup for a story he’s going to tell, but it jumped out as the! most! perfect! description! of a kind of zen state of interviewing:
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... Read More
Posted by Susan A. Kitchens on in
• Interviewing
• Personal History
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Dollarhide free eBook—I take what he says further
You can download a free eBook— Getting Started in Genealogy Online, by William Dollarhide. (Hat tip to Ancestories and Renee’s Genealogy Blog)
So I clicked, downloaded and read. I’ll take what he says a little bit further. Don’t go for just the facts, get the stories that go along with things, too.
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... Read More
Posted by Susan A. Kitchens on May 19, 2010 in
• Genealogy
• Interviewing
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The MyHeritage Top 100 Site List
Because more people should be linking to all the sites on this list. Happy to see some friends and writers I know. Looking forward to getting to know some new (to me) people.
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
D
- Destination: Austin Family
- Documenting the Details
- Donna’s Genealogy Blog
- Dr. Bill Tells Ancestor Stories
E
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
J
K
L
Posted by Susan A. Kitchens on May 16, 2010 in
• Cool Website
• Genealogy
• Links
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Tonight on HBO - Studs Terkel: Listening to America
Just got word there’ll be a documentary tribute to Studs Terkel, 1 day before what would have been his 98th birthday. The documentary by Eric Simonson looks at the man behind the oral histories of everyday people.
“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... Read More
Posted by Susan A. Kitchens on May 15, 2010 in
• Interviewing
• Oral history in the news
• Oral Historians
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Tartan Thoughts: So, there was, like, this big Genealogy shindig in Salt Lake City recently, and…
So I hear there was this great gathering of genealogists in Salt Lake City recently, at an event that goes by the acronym NGS. Many people attended, and blogged about it. I read a few of the roundups, but one in particular caught my eye — the Ancestry Insider post that included a link to a movie. About family with a clan. And a tartan. I’ll embed it here, with color commentary.
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... Read More
Posted by Susan A. Kitchens on May 14, 2010 in
• Genealogy
• Personal History
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I’m one in a hundred! (MyHeritage.com Top 100 Genealogy Site recognition)
WooHoo! I’m proud to say that Family Oral History Using Digital Tools has been recognized in the MyHeritage.com Top 100 Genealogy Sites.
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!
Posted by Susan A. Kitchens on May 13, 2010 in
• Cool Website
• Genealogy
• Personal
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“It was like I had opened up a history book and was able to ask it questions”
Grandpa’s 94-year old cousin. His name’s Keith. That’s who Louise Bibby Hocking of It’s my Life DVDs went to interview. She was Late. Lost. Flustered. But she finally arrived, and then it all changed. Her account of her day, what she discovered, and what it was like describes exactly why I am so jazzed about interviewing family members.
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... Read More
Posted by Susan A. Kitchens on May 06, 2010 in
• Interviewing
• Personal History
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