Passing It On

Manufacturing memories: Good or bad?

 
   

Today is the first day that people can buy the much-ballyhooed Apple iPhone. Its release has created the type of frenzy normally associated with electronic game gadgets and Star Wars films.

Among the people lining up at the local Apple store many hours in advance of the first sale was the husband of a friend of a friend who just happened to bring along two of his grandchildren. He was caught by a local television reporter for a report on last evening’s news. The kids will long remember this, he said. This is the kind of thing that memories are made of.

He’s right, of course. Stories of that long night waiting with Gramps will undoubtedly outlive the iPhone itself, which is likely to be viewed as a quaint relic by the time the kids reach grandpa’s age. But are these the stories we really want to pass down?

I’m reminded of a similar story from my own family. For years one of our Christmas traditions was to gather with my mother’s relatives at an aunt’s farm on Christmas Eve. Besides a feast of aebleskiver, apple cake and egg salad on pumpernickel, there was a gift exchange for the youngsters.

One year our kids were left out of the exchange. Not wanting them to come away empty-handed, my wife and I decided to provide gifts for them. I don’t recall the circumstances, but our kids had been more naughty than nice at the time so we bought each of them a mini-brick of fruitcake. I’m one of those rare souls who admits to liking fruitcake, but for the kids it was the equivalent of a lump of coal.

Some relatives thought I was being cruel; I thought I was building memories. They’ll never forget this Christmas, I reasoned. I was right. They remember the night well and I think the story has been folded into more pleasant memories of the farm and the Christmas Eve activities there, which the kids usually found hokey and hopelessly outdated.

Still, I wonder if it was the right way to create memories. It probably was a bit on the cruel side, even though the incident played a bit part in an otherwise enjoyable Christmas season. That’s something to think about whenever we craft events with memory-building as a desired consequence.

Larry Lehmer is a personal biographer who helps people preserve their family histories. To learn more, visit his web site or e-mail him.

Flickr photo courtesy of  Zatoichi.

Reading isn't what it used to be

Is reading becoming a lost art?

That's a valid question for personal biographers who, after all, are creating works to be read. In my case, at least, it's amazing how my reading habits have changed over the years.

As a professional writer and journalist, I spend a lot of my time reading, but it's more or less "drive-by reading." I read, analyze, use and move on. I suspect most of us read this way in this Internet age. We skim through e-mails, blogs, etc., without taking the time to really absorb what our eyes are taking in.

As a kid, my reading outside of mandatory schoolwork was much more leisurely. Outside of the public library, our choices were minimal. I grew up reading newspapers and still start each day with a cup of coffee and the Des Moines Register. But none of my three adult children - all college graduates who were raised in a newspaper-rich environment - are regular newspaper readers.

My reading habits are forever intertwined with my life experiences. As a sports-crazy kid I pored over the boxscores in the Sporting News. As a wishing-to-be-suave college student I read the entire James Bond series by Ian Fleming, alternating with the more gritty works of Harold Robbins. I'm practically a charter subscriber to Rolling Stone and have at various times subscribed to the Village Voice, Playboy, Crawdaddy, Editor & Publisher and Utne.

I'm currently reading "Escaping the Delta" by Elijah Wald, an examination of blues music in America, but it will take me months to finish it. My excuse: There's just too much on my plate these days.

Truth is, though, that reading for fun is not the priority in my life that it used to be. And that's a curious place for a writer to find himself.

More about names. Did you know that the study of personal names has a name itself? It's onomastics and onomastician Roger Darlington has published a treatise on the cultural differences of naming people. It's worth a visit if you're curious about such things.

Flickr photo courtesy of  ido1.

Not all time capsules are created equal

When I was a kid, I remember talking with friends about burying a time capsule. How cool it would be to bury something and dig it up a few years later. I don't remember if we actually followed through, but I'm sure there are remnants of our childhood underground somewhere.

This came back to me recently when the city of Tulsa, Oklahoma, reclaimed a cache of items that had been buried 50 years earlier. Among the items buried was a 1957 Plymouth Belvedere. As you can tell from the picture, the Tulsa capsule, which was designed to withstand an atomic blast, apparently couldn't deal with Mother Nature and her "gift" of several feet of standing water.

Now comes the current rage of geocaching, where people hide items  to be found through various clues, a modern-day version of a treasure hunt. One offshoot of this is geocapsuling, stashing a family's memories in a fake rock to be discovered later.

Since I have doubts that my descendants will take the time and trouble to hike through rugged terrain to uncover bits of my family history, I prefer a more direct method. But, maybe you come from more adventurous stock. If so, you can check out Time in a Capsule.

Whatever method you choose, make certain your efforts don't come to the same sad end of the 1957 Plymouth.

Flickr photo of Tulsa car courtesy of Telstar Logistics.

The data you save may be your own

 

Poor Hattie Harl.

Hattie spent 10 years in the early 1900s doing research and writing about the history of my home town of Council Bluffs, Iowa, only to see all her work go up in smoke in a Dec. 3, 1925, fire at the Grand Hotel.

Fires. Floods. Theft. Carelessness. There are lots of ways that a person's hard work can be whisked away. In this computer age, you can add electronic glitches to the list. Regardless of how it happens, such a loss is infuriating.

Have any of these happened to you?:

• Your idle computer starts chattering away and won't let you access anything on its hard drive.

• While working away on your desktop, you're suddenly staring at the infamous "blue screen of death" while your operating system performs a "physical memory dump" in your stunned presence.

• After "upgrading" software, nothing seems to work as well as before.

• After de-fragmenting your hard drive, e-mail disappears from your Inbox.

If any of these sound familiar, you're not alone. They've all happened to me. That's why I take care to routinely back up my data files. Even that's not foolproof, but my diligence has saved me on more than one occasion.

Here's what I do.

Every day I save my work on a flash drive. I'm using those new ones that have software on the drive that allow me to easily synchronize my e-mail and data files. I use a separate drive for each computer. I've been warned that flash drives have high failure rates, so I don't rely on them completely.

Once a week, I back up my files on a CD. I've never had much luck with rewritables so I use CD-Rs. I keep the most recent copies in my office in case I need to salvage something (which occasionally occurs because of some boneheaded mistake I've made) while older files go off-site to a safe deposit box at a bank.

CDs are flaky, too. Once every month or so, I burn my files onto the same gold CDs that I use for my personal history clients. Besides giving them a copy at the conclusion of a project, I make an archive copy for the safe deposit box.

There are other ways to back up copy - separate hard drives, for example. The manner in which you save data is a personal matter, but it's important that you have some sort of system in place before one of those inevitable computer calamities hits you.

You can learn more about the trouble with flash drives here. Here's a story about the loss of important documents and another story about the perils of pirated software.

Flickr photo courtesy of  Melissa King Photography.

Recording family stories is easier than ever

 

There was a time when tape recording was not an exercise for the timid. Equipment was heavy, bulky and expensive and the results were uneven. Plus, as the photo illustrates, not everyone responded the same way to the practice.

But almost all of us appreciate hearing stories from people close to us in their own voices. It's well worth the effort to get them and it's not nearly as difficult as it once was.

I was reminded of that recently on a visit with my mother-in-law. My wife and I have received a number of family items from her in recent years, but were unsure of the stories behind the items. We photographed each item and took the photos to her for identification.

While she told the story behind each item, I recorded her comments on a small digital recorder that I set on a table near her chair. After she was done and as I retrieved the recorder, she asked what it was. I explained and she commented that she hadn't even noticed it.

We got the information we wanted, in her own voice, and will add it to our own family history materials. The recorder I used was inexpensive, about $25, and I used the built-in microphone. With a lapel mike, I'm sure it would do even better.

There's a wide range of digital recorders available. You should be able to find one that works within your own comfort zone.

Digging deeper into Grandpa's past. Reporters and investigators have long used the Freedom of Information Act to uncover information about people they are looking into. All manner of government records are available under the FOIA, and access is not limited to journalists. Now comes a site that makes it easy to check for FBI records on deceased persons. The Get Grandpa's FBI File site will help you compose the actual letter, give you an idea on what sort of expenses might be incurred (they're minimal) and will direct you to appropriate field offices. Check it out.

Just for fun. Like to do jig saw puzzles? The JigZone site has hundreds that you can do online and has a feature where you can upload a photo and convert it to a puzzle. You can then share the puzzle with family and friends.

Coming up. July is Family Reunion month. Reunions are great occasions for launching family history projects. If you want some help in how to start such a project, contact me.

Flickr photo courtesy of Paul Smith UK.

Don't despair, help is just a click away

 

When it comes to writing your family history, you are in a uniquely powerful position.

You are the ultimate gatekeeper. You decide who gets interviewed, what the topic of conversation will be, what is kept and what is discarded. You are the final arbiter in all matters, choosing which photos, documents and other materials are sought and which are used in the final product. Your family history is viewed through the prism of your own experience.

That is an awesome responsibility. And a lot of work.

Many people start enthusiastically down the path of creating family history only to burn out or collapse under the sheer weight of what appears to be an overwhelming task.

It doesn’t have to be that way. Help is available.

As a personal historian (or family biographer, if you prefer) at When Words Matter, I help people preserve their family stories. More often than not, much of the hard work has already been done. In all cases, I evaluate the work already done, consider the goals and offer suggestions on how best to reach the goals. It’s a very collaborative process and, best of all, it’s absolutely free and without obligation.

The more common excuses for not pursuing a family history that I hear include:
• I just don’t know how to put it all together
• I can’t write
• I don’t have the time
• I really want Dad’s (or Mom’s, Aunt Harry’s, etc.) life story, but he won’t share it

That last one is particularly tough. No one wants to try to make a beloved family member do something that they don’t want to do. However, many of our more successful projects have resulted after we transformed reluctant subjects into enthusiastic participants.

So, whether you need a cheerleader, coach, friendly persuader or professional biographer, we’re available to help. If you don’t want to send me an e-mail to take advantage of our free initial consultation, maybe you’d like to take a spin through our free 23-lesson course on how to write a personal history. Here’s the first lesson.

Flickr photo courtesy of  Jimbola.

If it's Father's Day, it must be Big Fish time

Father's Day is coming up this Sunday which means I’ll be getting together with family in Omaha to honor my father, Walter B. “Jack” Lehmer (pictured). It’s a time for reminiscing and sharing family stories over some freshly grilled Stoysich sausage, my famous Nut Tree potato salad and some icy beverages and root beer floats.

It’s also time for my annual viewing of “Big Fish,” the Tim Burton film that I regard as the ultimate father-son movie. For those of you unfamiliar with the story line, it revolves around the relationship between Edward Bloom (played by Albert Finney and Ewan McGregor) and his estranged son, Will (Billy Crudup).

Edward Bloom, a former traveling salesman and pompous purveyor of tall tales, is dying and his wife (Jessica Lange) summons Will, a journalist now living in Paris with his pregnant wife (Marion Cotillard). Edward and Will haven’t spoken in years because Will resents his dad’s flamboyant storytelling, which he views as pure fantasy.

Will just wants the truth; Edward insists his stories are the truth.

“We’re storytellers, both of us,” Edward tells Will. “I speak mine out; you write yours down. Same thing.”

To Will’s wife, Edward explains his storytelling style: “Most men, they’ll tell you stories straight out. It won’t be complicated, and it won’t be interesting, either.’

The film, which relates Edward’s life story in that surreal Burton style, deals with Will’s search for the truth of his father’s life. What he discovers and how he reconciles truth with fantasy is at the heart of the film’s masterful conclusion.

Every family’s story has elements of truth and fantasy. They’re both important in documenting a family legacy. Don’t ignore either one.

Family history is where you find it

I used to love rummaging through the attic of my maternal grandparents’ home when I was a kid.

Part of the fascination was because it was so different from my friends’ homes. My grandfather, a cabinetmaker who emigrated from Denmark, designed and built it. It was a fairly small house at first but, as his family grew, he did what practical people did in those days: he dug by hand a hole for a basement, laid a foundation, moved his existing house, turned it 90 degrees and added a second story – the attic.

He raised five kids in that house – including two boys, who shared a small room in the attic. There were a couple of other small rooms up there, perfect for storage. It was a wondrous place, chock full of the memories that rotated through a household of seven over more than a half-century. Old photos, clothing, books – the raw materials of family legacy. Sadly, most of it is gone now. The house is no longer in the family. Many contents were sold or given away while the more precious items found new homes, distributed around the widespread extended family.

This is not a unique experience. You may have a similar story to tell. I’m not certain that my children will, though. By my best count, I’ve lived in 10 homes as an adult, none of them with an attic like that. Still, I’m hopeful that they carry with them similar memories and a reverence for the past.

You take your family history where you find it. Sometimes that can be unexpected places.

Consider this recent case in England, where a plain metal filing cabinet discovered in a basement laundry room was found to contain “a love letter by Napoleon; a diplomatic note to the king of France in the hand of Elizabeth I; a letter of condolence by John Donne; … and a withering letter by Charlotte Brontë on male shortcomings.”

Or the discovery by a book researcher of over 4,000 invoices and receipts from 165 businesses over a 75-year period in a small English town, “in seven dusty trash bags stored in a farmer's shed.”

It’s even possible that images of family history are still contained on unexposed film in an old camera gathering dust on a shelf or in a drawer somewhere in your own house.

So, open those drawers and boxes, check those shelves and peek into those old purses before you get rid of something. Who knows what family treasure may lurk there?

Flickr photo courtesy of  tm-de.

Don't let your history fade like yesterday's flowers

Every summer I sneak out of the office two or three times for a personal camping retreat. Since I take project files, marketing materials and a cell phone, it’s kind of a working retreat. Still, I find it relaxing to do this work around a campfire or sitting in the shade of an oak or hickory tree, far away from the daily routine. I also get a chance to leisurely explore some areas of my state that I normally whiz past or otherwise rarely see.

I took my first retreat of the season last week, taking in the relatively small southwestern Iowa communities of Winterset, Creston, Mount Ayr and Clarinda. I paused to check out one of the countless rural cemeteries that dot the Iowa landscape. Perhaps you have similar cemeteries in your community.

Its name – Memory Cemetery – caught my eye. As one might expect, it was tidy and neat. In fact, a maintenance man was trimming its manicured lawn on the day I visited – a perfect, clear, warm-but-not-yet-hot-and-muggy early summer Iowa day.

But something else caught my eye that morning, a large mound of color tucked under a tree on a distant corner of the cemetery grounds. As I approached, it was clear what the pile was – hundreds of floral arrangements that had decorated the cemetery’s graves a little over a week earlier, on Memorial Day. As a sign noted, flowers that interfered with mowing would be removed one week after a holiday.

Although totally appropriate, it was still sad to see what had days earlier been loving tributes to the departed, dumped into a corner where they would soon fade and complete their own dust-to-dust cycle.

It also struck me that our own family stories could suffer a similar fate if we don’t take care to save them. We all have stories of loss when loved ones die, taking their own unique and special qualities to the grave with them. The best memorial we can give them is to preserve their legacies so future generations will know them as more than a name on a grave marker.

Wait a minute! Wasn't that...?

It’s easy when working on a personal history project to get caught up with the seriousness of it. After all, we’re putting together something that will carry our legacy forward several generations. That’s important stuff.

But, don’t forget the small stuff, too. Especially those tiny moments that briefly take us in an unexpected direction, those detours from our life’s highway that propel us down an unfamiliar, yet memorable, path.

I’m thinking today of brushes with celebrity. Have you ever met anybody famous?

In my work as a journalist, I came in contact with many well-known people through my work.

As sports editor of The Daily Nonpareil in Council Bluffs, Iowa, sometimes they even came to me. Joe Dusek, a local wrestling legend who became a friend in his days as a sports promoter, once brought Olympic wrestler Chris Taylor in for an interview as he embarked on a pro mat career. Taylor was what you might call a super-heavyweight and we had a tough time finding a chair for him to sit on. Sadly, he died not long after his visit.

I had the opportunity to meet and write about baseball home run king Hank Aaron and Alabama football coaching legend Bear Bryant during my Council Bluffs stay and had the unique distinction of sharing the restroom in the University of Nebraska football press box with Stan Musial and Red Skelton. While working at the Des Moines Register, I interviewed tennis great Ivan Lendl and Hall of Fame pitcher Bob Feller just by virtue of answering the phone when no one else was around.

There are others: Indy car driver Scott Sharp, pro bowlers Buzz Fazio and Loa Boxberger (a long story), rockabilly singers Buddy Knox and Carl Perkins, Dion DiMucci, Waylon Jennings, Bobby Vee.

But one of my favorites had nothing to do with my writing career. On a family vacation, in my haste to get a table in the dining room at Custer State Lodge in South Dakota, I pushed aside and nearly knocked down former Sen. George McGovern. I didn’t even recognize him at the time and only did so after my wife pointed him out to me. Fortunately, this was not when he was a presidential candidate so he was without the Secret Service escort that would have undoubtedly led to my detention.

None of these encounters played a significant role in my life, but each story adds an interesting thread to the tapestry of my life. Don’t forget to add your brushes with celebrity to your work.

Flickr photo courtesy of Hardcore Shutterbug.