Not that anybody is knocking on my door asking for life advice, but here it is dispensed anyhow. Do yourself a future favor, and record by any means possible the people who carry your family stories. I could not be more thankful for the voices I have digitally preserved, my grandmother, my mom.
Last week I tuned into Bryan Alexander’s Future Trends Forum because, well, Bryan runs a fantastic conversational web show, but more so because one of his key guests is a key influence on me, Joe Lambert, now hanging his no gathering moss stone at StoryHost but legendary as a cofounder of the StoryCenter, origin point for digital storytelling. The Future Trends Forum topic last week was on Aging, Storytelling, and Higher Education.
I’m forgetting the point in the conversation where there was discussion of recording stories of the life experienced people we know, and drawing from my own habits there, I said something in the chat about doing what you can to record the audio of your older relatives (or heck any of them) linking to one og many blog posts here where I talked about in the mid 1990s recording the voice of my grandmother talking about her life in the early 1900s, or how I called them– Granny’s Stories.
And Bonni Stachowiak caught reference and tagged me asking for a link where I wrote about the importance of recorded these stories in audio.
Gulp. I had not written that one, just shared clips in various memory posts. And indeed, the blog is, well, not tidy in organization.
So here it is!
I adored my grandmother, who made me feel like the most important person on earth. But I delighted in her telling me her stories of being born in New Jersey uncertain of her exact birth date (approximated from a census record), her father who raised a horde of kids after his wife passed away early, who also happened to be a chess champion. I decided on a family visit to Baltimore in 1994 I wanted to record her stories, which I did at the time with a crappy Sony microcassette recorder. This photo was at the recording.
More than 10 years later I digitized the audio, put them on an audio CD to share with my family. played around with some now dead audio web tool called TapeWrite, made some into videos. But more than anything, I value hearing her voice, I can listen and quite instantly be transported to sitting near her in her Warren Park apartment or in the passenger seat of her red rambler. (“I always drive fast because I do not want to have some young driver complaining about being stuck behind an old lady driver.”)
Audio on its own creates a human presence like no other media, the spoken voice is so much more than words in audio form. So here’s the words when we asked Grandma about growing up in Newark, New Jersey:
So what was it like going up in Newark, New Jersey in the early 1900s?
Okay.
Remember you talked about your father making a cigars?
Yeah, my father was an apprentice. He was what they call in Europe a “Yeshiva Bucher.” That means a student of Judaism. He was supposed to become a rabbi. But when he came over here, had to make a living. So they apprenticed him to a cigar maker. And he became a cigar maker for the rest of his life. But he also became a champion chess player.
Did he smoke them?
He smoked them, yeah. He smoked them and he was a wonderful father. My mother died when we, Florence and I, were very young. And he brought us up.
What did your mother die from?
T.B.
And how old were you?
I think I was ten and Florence was eight.
Conversation with my grandmother, 1994
Sure that conjure up some ideas of the story. But to hear her sing song voice, is so much more a vivid, rich, texture of a memory, even with the terrible audio quality (you can year the plastic reels turning). And the richness is on a different level for any of us who lived with this woman’s presence (and quirks).
I have maybe 30-40 minutes of this conversation and it means so much I can hear her voice more than 30 years later.
That set the stage for me to do more recordings. After my Dad passes away in 2001, my Mom and I grew quite closer. We started a tradition where each November around Thanksgiving I’d fly her out to Arizona and we would spend a week or two together, just hanging out. I would do my online work and she would read books or do her crossword puzzle.
There were times, and bless her for being curious, she would call me, and say something like, “Alaaaaaaaaaan, can you explain this ‘Twitter’ thing to me.” Of course I would stop what I was doing, and I pretty much decided to send out a tweet to ask for help explaining twitter. I recorded out conversation, and again, I can hear her voice and get that sense of being in the room with her. The 10 minute conversation is in the post, it’s precious.
It was in my hey day of ed tech travel that in mid April 2008 I was headed to the eLearning Guild (are they around) conference in Orlando (for a good throwback laugh, see what I was presenting on!), Since Mom lived in Fort Myers, I planed my trip to come early and visit for a week. It was a belated celebration of her 80th birthday in February. She planned a stay in Sanibel Island, we had dinner at a place she like to listen to jazz (how did I know know Mom liked jazz?)
I remember my boasting about not needing sun screen because of my “Arizona base tan”. I fried like a sausage in hot oil. We laughed. One night I asked if I could record her telling some stories of her growing up, later meeting and marrying my dad. Oh this conversation is even more precious.
Here’s a few minutes of me asking about her parents. Mom’s father, Harry, my grandfather died before I was born, and her mother, who I remember a bit visiting “Bubby” as a kid, I have no sense of them as a married couple, raising kids in the middle of the Depression in Baltimore.
Again, its about 45 minutes of us going back and forth, me teasing a bit just for fun. The thing is all these stories they carried, I always counted on my parents and my aunts and uncles etc to be able to summon uo and share if I asked. Then one day, in life, you notice that you are pretty much at the top of the family tree, and you wonder if asked, could you retell those stories? Are they gone? Have they gone the way of the three deaths?
I have a smattering of more family audio. My cousin (well technically my second cousin) Lorrie had a fascinating youth growing up with a family that performed high dive acts at carnivals that went up and down the east coast. On one of my visits I insisted she record some stories of “carny” life
Her father, Billy Outten was famous for his dare devil high dive act where he lit his shorts on fire and jumped into a small pool, film of which made it into MoveTime News reels and clips of his dive act were included in the movie The Right Stuff. If you look at the comments on that post, it was attracted a number of people whio were related or knew of this man.
But the best part is hearing Lorrie’s voice narrate the stories to life.
After my Mom passed away, on a visit to Baltimore I did record a few more stories with her two sisters, and get more perspective on their youth growing up on Aisquith Street. I wanted Aunt Dorothy also to talk about her abstract paintings and for Aunt Ruth to share her experience being a nurse in World War II (I tried to get them to give me some inside stories about Mom, but they were too nice to share gossip).
I’m also glad I have a bit of audio of my father-in-law Albert telling the famous story of the bear that climbed over their camper.
For having these audio bits I am still a bit disappointed at voices I did not record.
So have to urge you again to not delay and find a tine ti sit down with an old family relative and just record a conversations, natural ones, not interviews. Get them in the voice you know from being around them. Get them to share the stories that preceded you. It does not need fancy audio equipment. And keep that source audio somewhere safe! Do not trust it to the cloud or some proprietary service.
Stop reading this blog and go record ’em!
Ok?
What are you waiting for?
Go!
Featured Image: The set up I used in 2013 to digitize my grandmother’s stories from audio cassette recorder in 1994 (I had to buy an old player on eBay) into an Edirol R-09 digital audio recorded (no idea where that device went). Digitizing flickr photo by cogdogblog shared into the public domain using Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication (CC0)
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