Passing It On

If beauty’s only skin deep, what are tattoos?

Today’s topic is tattoos. I had originally planned to write about the importance and value of family medical histories, but that was before I stumbled upon this post by Tori at the “of personal value” blog.

Tori notes that most of us sport scars and marks from a lifetime of bicycle mishaps, falls and surgeries. Many more of us carry intentionally inflicted indelible mementoes of our past on our arms, backs, buttocks and anyplace else reachable by the tattooist’s needle.

I thought of this as I watched a basketball game recently. One of the players had an oddly retro look and I couldn’t quite figure out why. Eventually, it came to me – he was tattoo-free, at least the parts of him that were visible were.

This is a seismic shift from my youth when just about the only folks who owned up to being tattooed were those who shared the common bond of once having served our nation in time of war but who had obviously succumbed to the effects of hard liquor during a hard-earned ribald night of liberty.

In my college and young adult days, it was not unusual to see a young woman adorned with a delicately crafted rose or butterfly, on her ankle, lower back or breast.

Today, tattoos are pretty much accepted at all levels of polite society. If you’re like me, however, you might wonder how that Gothic tattooed and pierced look will appear in, say,  another 20-30 years.

After you’ve considered how scars and tattoos and the like fit into your own family’s history, you might check out a few of the links in Tori’s blog, like this look at the cultural history of the tattoo or this story about an Australian man who found a way to save his dad’s tattoos after his death. Before reading this post, I didn’t realize that some library books are actually bound in human skin. An interesting twist to the whole tattoo issue is that of copyright. This post covers that angle from a British point of view.

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

Flickr photo courtesy of Maknakolektiff+.

Even the streets have tales to tell

My personal history business is built around the premise that every family has stories that are worth saving for future generations.

As we grow up, we are continuously exposed to the strange meanderings of slightly off-center relatives, the accomplishments of more inspirational ancestors and the tawdry gossip of all manner of personal relationships – proper and improper. A personal historian collects those stories and weaves them with other facts and details to create a rich tapestry of a family history.

I wrote about storytelling from the Nashville conference of the Association of Personal Historians last fall where I was treated to presentations from author Robert Hicks and history instructor James Walsh, but just last week I was reminded of the power of storytelling.

The reminder came in the form of a street person on the skywalks of Des Moines as I returned to my car following a basketball game. Street people retreat to the warmth of the skywalks each winter where they ply their trade of trying to coax a little hard cash from their marks.

Panhandling has come a long way since the “got any spare change?” days of my youth. One local guy has at least three elaborate stories in his repertoire, involving a broken down car (probably the most common in this area), a sick aunt and (my favorite) the valuable stock portfolio his broker has tied up until he can come up with the cash to release it.

I’m sure you’ve already nailed down the main storytellers in your family for your own history, but don’t forget those secondary storytellers, too. There are likely some undiscovered gems in your family’s past.

Some things you’d better know. Thomas MacEntee of the Destination: Austin Family blog has come up with a list of “10 Things Every Man Worth His Salt Should know How to Do.” How Thomas came up with this post without once mentioning duct tape is beyond me.

How popular is your name? I don’t think I had an elementary school class that didn’t have at least two Larrys in it. Today there are probably entire elementary schools without a Larry. Thanks to Name Voyager at Baby Name Wizard, I now know that Larry was the 18th most popular name in the 1950s but was No. 381 on the list in 2006. What about your name?

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

storyteller 1  courtesy of bored@work.

Oh man, is this trip really necessary?

It’s among life’s more annoying aggravations. Some people skip events because of it and most of us have found ourselves unwittingly snared it its grip. Yet it’s estimated that most Americans will spend between two and three years of our lives doing it.

“It” is waiting in line, often called queuing. Although a necessary component of civilized society, queuing can be a frustrating experience.

Fellow blogger Terry Thornton got me thinking about this with his post over at Hill Country of Monroe County, Mississippi. What I’ve come to realize is that I used to spend a lot more time waiting in lines than I do these days. That’s partially due to the convenience of the Internet, where I can now shop, buy tickets and pay bills, but I suspect that there’s some learned behavior at work, too.

When I was in college, it seemed like I spent a lot of time in lines. Registering for classes was a time-consuming ordeal, as was the simple process of picking up license plates each year. Buying tickets to sporting events and concerts also ate up a lot of time. Much of my basic training time in the U.S. Air Force was spent waiting for one thing or another.

I learned that it paid to plan ahead, like make reservations at restaurants or buying tickets in advance. In some cases, though, when faced with either waiting in a line or not going, I often didn’t go.

The whole process of queuing has undergone some changes over the years. For instance, many places now democratically use a single line, rather than forcing customers to guess which one of multiple lines is moving faster. But there’s still the injustice in some outlets of peeling off the person who’s waited the least amount of time when a new checkout opens. And many discount stores have many more unopened checkout lanes than are in use at any given time.

Think back on your queuing experiences. I’m sure many meaningful relationships were ignited by a long wait somewhere. With all that time spent in line, something interesting must have happened in your lifetime.

The MSNBC web site has some tips on how to avoid some lines and, as this interview on NPR shows, scientists are tackling the problem. As you might expect, the folks over at Disney have their own take on the situation as it affects visitors to the House of the Mouse.

Larry Lehmer, founder and president of When Words Matter, is a personal historian who helps people preserve their family histories. To learn more, visit his web site or send him an e-mail.

Flickr photo courtesy of Paul Russell99.

Bring on the clowns (just the funny ones, please)

Where do you stand on clowns? Were they a childhood delight or fright?

I caught the tail end of a report on National Public Radio today that said a study showed that kids are frightened by clown motifs in hospitals. The source of this report was a study by the University of Sheffield in England.

The results of this study are hardly surprising to me. Although clowns at a distance, like at a circus or at a parade, are tolerable, there’s something unsettling about being face-to-face with someone whose true identity is obscured by impenetrable layers of greasepaint and latex. Apparently others share this feeling. There’s even a name for people with “an abnormal or exaggerated fear of clowns” – coulrophobia.

I don’t know how clowns have come to get such an evil rap. Clarabelle of the Howdy Doody Show (played by Captain Kangaroo himself, Bob Keeshan) seemed pleasant enough. So did Cliffy, Nicky and Scampy, the clowns who shared a ring with hottie bandleader Mary Hartline on Super Circus. And Emmett Kelly, the perpetually sad Weary Willie, once turned down a lucrative movie role that would have required him to play a killer clown.

But bad clowns abound in modern culture. Mass murderer John Wayne Gacy used his clown identity to lure his young victims. The sadistic rowdies of the film Clockwork Orange forever stigmatized the song Singing in the Rain, the notorious Pennywise Gang terrorized kids in Boston and elsewhere in the early 1980s and Krusty the Clown of the Simpsons became a star with his own web page. And where do you suppose the band Insane Clown Posse drew inspiration for its name?

It’s not just clowns, either. Children, who apparently favor more traditionally attired adults, are often frightened by Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny and sports team mascots. This has not deterred adults from perpetuating this generally perceived benign rite of passage on their offspring.

Despite their sometimes negative image, most clowns are a hard-working lot, dedicated to providing pleasure to their audiences. There’s even a code of ethics for good clowns. And Bruce “Charlie” Johnson’s essay, What Is a Clown?, presents clowning in its finest light.

Make sure you detail your own “clown experiences” in your own history and use them to shape your hopes and beliefs for future generations.

Larry Lehmer, founder and president of When Words Matter, is a personal historian who helps people preserve their family histories. To learn more, visit his web site or send him an e-mail.

Flickr photo courtesy of Grundlepuck.

Should your family information be a secret?

You know what they say about the best-laid plans going awry? My genealogical plans seem to be plagued by a chronic affliction called Murphy’s Law.

Twice in the past few months, I’ve signed up for an introductory class on genealogy with a local school system. Twice it’s been canceled because of a lack of interest. What’s up with that? I keep telling people how popular researching family history is and we can’t even convene a quorum of genealogical wannabes?

Fortunately, the Iowa Genealogical Society has a 2-hour beginners’ session coming up. I’ve been waiting to unwrap and install my new Family Tree Maker 2008 until my class began, but I guess I’ll plunge ahead on my own. Thanks to all the great genealogy bloggers out there, I feel like someone’s got my back on this one.

So, instead of writing about my hopes for my new class, I’ve decided to take on the sensitive topic of privacy vs. access. Although this has long been a topic of interest to genealogists, the rhetoric has sharpened in recent years because of the proliferation of identity theft and tighter governmental restrictions on data in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

It wasn’t that long ago that we shared our Social Security numbers with virtually anyone who asked. I remember when I first opted to leave my SSAN off my driver’s license about 30 years ago. It was a novelty then; it’s the law now.

Access to vital records is the lifeblood of genealogical research. Although the explosive growth of the Internet has been matched or exceeded by  easy access to these records, many genealogists feel threatened by the new trends. It’s not just government records, either. What about all those personal history sites that have popped up? When is it OK to list information about a family member?

Here’s a news account about twins who were separated at birth, met as adults, fell in love and married. The marriage was annulled when their true relationship was discovered and a discussion has begun on what public information may have prevented this. You can also read Janice Brown’s post at her Cow Hampshire blog on the whole privacy/genealogy issue.

How have you come to grips with this vexing problem?

Larry Lehmer, founder and president of When Words Matter, is a personal historian who helps people preserve their family histories. To learn more, visit his web site or send him an e-mail.

Flickr photo courtesy of jaki good.

Black, white, yellow or brown: Does it really matter?

How has race impacted your family history?

Although this sensitive issue is often overlooked as we delve into our roots, it often plays a larger role than you might imagine. My blogging friend Miriam Midkiff of AnceStories has an excellent post this week on the topic, with Martin Luther King Day less than a week away.

Even in these relatively enlightened times, the race issue is never far away. This morning’s paper carried a story about Louisiana’s new governor, Bobby Jindal, calling him “the nation’s first elected Indian-American chief executive and the state’s first nonwhite governor since Reconstruction.” Democratic presidential hopefuls Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have been sparring over the issue for the past week.

I grew up in the overwhelmingly white community of Council Bluffs, Iowa. Council Bluffs was also a very blue collar railroad town in those days. I worked my way through college mostly by working a variety of railroad jobs. On those jobs I worked side-by-side mostly with white men of limited education who were outspoken about their deep-seated racist views. I also worked with American Indians, blacks and Latinos at a time when the civil rights movement was just gaining a solid foothold in American culture. It was a rich, yet often tense, environment.

My father-in-law was mostly Irish and faced prejudice in his formative years in Omaha. Italians and Czechs also had their own enclaves in the first half of the 20th century in Omaha, doing much of their business and most of their socializing with “their own kind.”

It’s hard for me to get a good read on how we all get along these days. In times of crisis, a true democracy built on the backs and minds of a diverse populace whose civil rights are genuinely equal should be able to pull together for the common good rather than splintering off into separate groups dedicated to preserving their own mutual self interests.

Regardless of how you see the state of the races today, it’s worth reflecting on where your family has been with regard to race relations, evaluating where it is today and, most importantly, projecting where you’d like for it to be in future generations.

Larry Lehmer, founder and president of When Words Matter, is a personal historian who helps people preserve their family histories. To learn more, visit his web site or send him an e-mail.

Flickr photo courtesy of benchilada.

Oops, I almost did it again

   

I got so carried away with my post about dancing that I totally neglected to point out one of my greatest dancing successes. Actually, this is the second time that I’ve neglected to spread the word.

Last month, blogging friend Janice over at the splendid Cow Hampshire blog, used her creative talents to put together a series of Christmas clips with the always-entertaining folks at Jib Jab, using photos of some of her geneablogging friends.

I was honored to be part of the crew that Janice digitally assembled to decorate the Jib Jab Christmas tree. In this clip, Janice exercised some literary license by bestowing on me some elfin dancing skills of the first rank. Thank you, Janice.

While you’re there, you might check out some of Janice’s other Christmas clips. They’re all a hoot.

This also gives me an opportunity to use another photo from Bunny Gibson’s Bandstand party. In this one, a few of the L.A. Bandstand regulars pose for the VH1 cameraman.

Larry Lehmer, founder and president of When Words Matter, is a personal historian who helps people preserve their family histories. To learn more, visit his web site or send him an e-mail.

Dealing with the great dancing divide

How do you deal with “happy feet?” The kind Steve Martin talks about. You never know when you’ll be afflicted. You might be sitting in a waiting room somewhere when it happens. An infectious beat will catch your ear and pretty soon your toes are tapping.

The dancers among us might be briefly propelled to some fantasy land where they’re happily jitterbugging away. But others are content with the music alone, limiting their rapture to a bit of table tapping or head nodding.

Your family history probably determines on which side of the dance divide you fall. Some of us find ourselves dancing through adulthood with a partner from the other side.

I’m a non-dancer, partially by choice; partially by a marked lack of rhythm. My wife, on the other hand, loves to dance. I come from a non-dancing family; she has fond memories of dancing with her father as a young girl. We occasionally find ourselves at weddings or parties where dancing is part of the entertainment. We both find these occasions awkward, but for different reasons.

It’s not like we haven’t tried. We took lessons prior to her company Christmas party last month. I think she would agree that we were awful. I think I’d rather shake my inner discombobulated mojo on a dance floor crowded with my closest friends and relatives than take another lesson.

There’s a lot of pressure connected with being a non-dancer. A few years back, I was at a party at the California home of Kathleen “Bunny” Gibson, a former regular dancer on the American Bandstand television show in her native Philadelphia. Bunny and I teamed up to start a book about the show’s Philly years. That’s Bunny in the blue poodle skirt in the picture I took at the party that’s with this post.

Bunny had arranged for a big party with some of the Southern California dancers who were regulars on the show after Dick Clark shipped the show west in the mid-1960s. Believe me, these people can dance. And dance, they did, boogalooing all over the makeshift dance floor in Bunny’s dining area while cameras whirred from VH-1 and a local television station. It was a big deal, for sure.

At some point, Bunny asked me if I was dancing. After stammering through my well-practiced two-left-feet mantra, she took a step back, thought a moment, then replied: “But you could, if you wanted to, right?”

To me, this is one of the biggest hazards of being a non-dancer. Dancing is such a natural, joyful experience for dancers that they cannot fathom why everyone doesn’t share their enthusiasm for the activity. At the extreme, they can be unmerciful in their cajoling. Why don’t you get out there, you big oaf? How can you be so selfish, letting your wife sit here while everyone else is having fun?

On one family occasion, a relative was so persistent in her endless taunting, so skeptical of my protestations, that I caved in and led her to the dance floor where we stumbled around a bit. “Wow, you really can’t dance, can you?” was her thoughtful critique.

Where does dancing fit in your family history? I’ll bet lots of dance floor stories are lurking out there just waiting to be uncovered.

Larry Lehmer, founder and president of When Words Matter, is a personal historian who helps people preserve their family histories. To learn more, visit his web site or send him an e-mail.

Photo: Bunny's party 1 courtesy of  lwlehmer.

Saying goodbye on our own terms

How do you plan to spend your final hours on this planet?

Most of us don’t give this a lot of thought, assuming, I suppose, that we’ll make a graceful exit, surrounded by loved ones as we gently slip the bonds of our mortal existence. But death has its own peculiar, often cruel, agenda. That makes it all the more precious when we are allowed to depart on our own terms.

This point was poignantly made recently by a couple unrelated, yet similar instances.

In the first, a high school classmate of mine spent his Christmas season in the hospital, sitting at the bedside of his mother, who hadn’t awakened following hip surgery. He shared the experience his vigil through a series of e-mails. Although it was apparent she wasn’t going to recover, the sweet scent of freshly cut flowers filled her room and the soft music of the holiday season washed over her as she was surrounded by family and friends.

After she died on Christmas Day, my friend wrote “The presence of her Heart residing in mine – and yours – will be her most precious legacy.”

The second instance involved marketing guru and networking expert Keith Ferrazzi, who faced a similar experience with his Aunt Rose. After flying cross country, he arrived in time to join a guitar-playing nutritionist in singing Christmas carols to his aunt, before writing:

“Then at 2:37 today, just as Aunt Rose brought those she touched so much peace during her life, Rose died in peace and once again gave all of us in that room a gift I’ll never forget. I learned to live a little better today. In death, I saw what matters in life, and I want more of it. We all deserve it and we can have it.”

My friend Stefani Twyford, who alerted me to the Ferrazzi situation, did a nice post of her own in which she expresses the value of finding our true home. Stefani also makes the point that we should all document the important moments in our life as soon as possible after the event to preserve the intimate details that can be lost over time.

Personal historian Larry Lehmer, founder and president of When Words Matter, helps people preserve their family histories. To learn more, check out his web site or send him an e-mail.

Flickr photo courtesy of Ennor.

Do you know where your family is right now?

Think back two or three weeks to when a trip to your mailbox was like a visit to your personal past. All those Christmas cards and family newsletters stirring up memories of friends and family members. If you’re like me, you won’t hear from many of those folks for the next 11 months. That’s a shame, really.

I’m not big on New Year’s resolutions, but I definitely would like to do a better job of keeping up with those people who have enriched my life over the years. At one time, e-mail seemed to be the solution. It’s so easy to dash off a message and send it on its way. You could even send the same message to more than one person with one click of the mouse. But, somehow, it hasn’t been that simple.

One thing I’ve started to do this week, though, is track down some of those people important to me and locate them on a map. This is a fairly simple process these days. I’ve started creating mine using Google maps. I’ll be able to pinpoint the locations of every long-lost cousin and uncle at a glance. You can even include contact information, photos and videos.

The map by itself won’t solve my keeping in touch dilemma but it will give me one more tool I can share with my family and friends. By making it interactive and public, every family member can have access to the same data. Hopefully, this digital community will unite us as we once were when we lived in the same community.

There are many other networking tools available, of course, but the choices can be a bit overwhelming, especially when you’re trying to tie together a community of varying computer skills and appetites. I hope by starting simple, we can open the doors to sharing more of our family histories.

Larry Lehmer is a personal historian and founder of When Words Matter. Check out his web site or send him an e-mail.

Google map of crafty spots in San Francisco courtesy of Feisty Elle.