Legacy MattersShe made memory boxes for her two young sons containing keepsakes like a bottle of her perfume and a recorded song and letters telling them how they should behave like avoiding "negative moaning, consider other people's feeling and not to be afraid to make mistakes.
Now, Sandra Carey-Boggins has died of breast cancer.
She was informed the disease had spread to such an extent that it was beyond treatment. But after being told the news, she embarked on a journey to fulfill as many of her lifetime ambitions as possible.
A month after being told her condition was terminal, she married Tom, her partner of four years. She also took part in kayaking, power-boating, quad-biking, hot air ballooning and a holiday to New Zealand.
Her mother, Mavis Wise, said: 'She passed away very peacefully.'
A recipe for Toxic Photo Soup: Layer 1,000 photos in a large, watertight plastic storage tub. Place high on basement shelving unit. Fail to notice small, leaky basement window nearby. Marinate, unattended, three to four years. Open and serve.
Yield: 1,000 blank sheets of sopping photo paper and four gallons of black, stinky, toxic rainwater-chemical soup.
Yes, it's time to digitize your photos. David Pogue has advice on various services to scan your photos in Your Photos, Off the Shelf at Last.
I Was There. Just Ask Photoshop
REMOVING her ex-husband from more than a decade of memories may take a lifetime for Laura Horn, a police emergency dispatcher in Rochester. But removing him from a dozen years of vacation photographs took only hours, with some deft mouse work from a willing friend who was proficient in Photoshop, the popular digital-image editing program.
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In an age of digital manipulation, many people believe that snapshots and family photos need no longer stand as a definitive record of what was, but instead, of what they wish it was.
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“What we’re doing,” Mr. Johnson said, “is fulfilling the wish that all of us have to make reality to our liking.”
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Alan D. Entin, a clinical psychologist in Richmond, Va., uses patients’ family photographs as raw material to inspire discussion and analysis of their roles and relationships within their family.
“They’re a record,” he said. “They have existed over time and space. They are important documents.”
To alter them is to invite self-deception, he said. “The value to accepting a photograph of yourself as you are is that you’re accepting the reality of who you are, and how you look, and accepting yourself that way, warts and all. I think the pictures you hate say as much about you as pictures you love.”
This photographic journal of an artist's last days with his father is both beautiful and moving, if a bit bewildering in its navigation.
Philip Toledano's Days with My Father,
He spent 30 years tracing his family tree all the way back to William the Conquerer.
Ah yes, Roy's scrapbooks. The 76-year-old has quite a few of them. He has just finished compiling what is thought to be the world's biggest family tree.
It takes in 9,394 relatives, including King Henry I and Alfred the Great, and stretches back 1,500 years, all the way to AD500 when Cerdic of Wessex (another of his ancestors) was on the throne.
Compiling it has involved three decades - Roy started in 1980 - of poring over old papers from rarely disturbed filing cabinets in county records offices, inspecting inscriptions on graves, and struggling to read old-fashioned script in parish registers and wills. The project has cost Roy £20,000.
That's 45 generations!
Why do women hate photographs of themselves?
Talking to my friends, I realise that most of us have hundreds of pictures of our children, our partners, our friends, but scarcely a single one of ourselves.
My friend Helen - slim, attractive and stylish - confessed to me recently that she is photo-phobic. “From looking at our photographs, you'd think my husband was married to the au pair. If I died tomorrow, my children would hardly have a single photograph to remember me by,” she says.
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“Photographs aren't very representative of what we look like in reality,” she says. “It is just a record of one static moment. People are never completely still like they are in a photograph, and animation changes the way we look. In studies, people are often rated as significantly better-looking in person than in photographs, and that's because of personal qualities, such as confidence.”
Ironically, for all my dislike of cameras, I regret that I have so few photos as records of my personal history. I have scarcely a single picture of myself in my twenties, for example.
And oddly, when I look at old photos of me, ones that I loathed at the time I now think look fine. Where once I saw old and fat, I now see young and slim. So, tell me: why will I still be sitting at the PC deleting this year's crop as usual?
Kevin Kelly's blog Cool Tools is a favorite of mine because I'm always finding good information about products and services that make life easier.
He's found a service that can scan your old photos and slides cheaply called Scancafe.
Here is how it works: You pack up your images and mail them to ScanCafe's headquarters in Northern California. They count them up, and repackage them before shipping the pieces to India. In India they are scanned, touched up, rotated and then privately posted to your account at their website. You then go through the images online and select the ones you want to keep. You are allowed to dismiss (and not pay for) up to 50% of the total for that order. You can reject the images because you aren't happy with how they look online, or simply because you don't want the image. In the specific case of original photo negatives, there is no reliable way to communicate which image(s) you want on the strip, so ScanCafe will scan the entire strip of negatives. You'll have to reject the particular frames you don't want (but no more than 50% of the total order. Combine them with slides to keep your percentage down.)
After you've made your selection, ScanCafe will send the originals back to the US and then from CA they will ship you a DVD/CD with your images and your originals. It takes 7-8 weeks door to door. The quality of the scan is great for everything except huge billboard enlargements. The photos are scanned at 3000 dpi which gives a file about the quality of a 7 megapixel digital shot. You can scoop the final jpeg images into iPhoto or Flick'r or Blurb books. They are rotated into correct up-down/sidways orientation by hand.
Some people are concerned about sending their precious originals to India - or anywhere for that matter. They should not be. ScanCafe has a very elaborate tracking and shipping system that would work even if you were shipping jewels. Their scanning facilities in Bangalore are more organized than you are. I have more trust in this system that I would handing them over to any neighborhood scanner.
I have a big crate of old slides and photo albums just waiting to be scanned. So far, I've taken a number of slides to my neighborhood camera store for a specific project and been pleased with the results. If any of you have used ScanCafe, I'd be interested in your experience.
Adriana Lukas muses on the new museum in Hungary dedicated to Nazism and Communism in House of Terror.
I believe that the best and only way to understand Communism and Nazism is through the lives of individuals who were affected by it not through a historical methodology or chronological exposition.
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Everyday life is as important to understanding of what happens as are historical milestones. It might help people realise how little it takes for the society to find itself in a grasp of a toxic ideology and how gradual the decline can be, how unnoticed the erosion of freedom, dignity and moral strength.
You too are a witness to history. What will you say about the history you've seen to your children and your children's children?
How my baby helped me discover the tragic mother I never knew
For good or ill, most of us see flashes of our mothers in our daughters - but for me it's both shocking and exquisitely sweet, because my mother has been dead for more than 30 years.
I never knew her, and that's why it's so wonderful to find shades of her again now. She's there in the glint of my daughter's smile, in her infectious laugh and sparkiness; but most of all, she's there in the love I have for Nancy.
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But I knew, however painful it might be, that I had to find the true essence of my mother.
Tentatively, I asked my mother's brothers and sister to write down their memories of her. (Sadly, my grandmother is now dead and my grandfather is very old.) I needed to know who my mother was. I needed to discover what she would have wanted for me.
I needed to know mundane details about her. Which hand did she write with? What made her happy? What made her laugh? For the first time in over 30 years, I wanted her existence to be acknowledged.
Because he was the most important man in my life, it doesn't seem so long since he's been gone even though my father died sixteen years ago.
In fact, I got a letter from him, or part of one, just last month.
In the course of getting ready to sell the family house after my mother's death, some fifty years of accumulated stuff had to be gone through and decisions made as to where all the stuff was to go.
Going through some old files, my brother Kevin found a sealed letter written by my father to be opened only after his death. Never opened, it contained a last will and testament written by my father in January of 1961 just before a trip he was to take to California with my mother.
Apprehension before a long trip is common, instinctively connected to the apprehension of our own mortality. As Katherine Mansfield wrote, "Whenever I prepare a journey, I prepare as though for death. Should I never return, all is in order."
Just before a long trip is when most people write or revise their wills.
My father was only 38 and the father of seven young children when he wrote the will we just found.
He hadn't traveled much since the war where he was a Flight Officer in the Army Air Force. While recuperating from an illness, he met and, a month or two later, married my mother, an Army Air Force nurse. I came soon after. We moved to Vermont when he began college on the GI Bill. By the time he had finished law school and passed the bar, a fifth baby arrived, little Colleen. At the same time, he also got the highest mark on the civil service entrance exam, a congruence of events that elicited an invitation from the Governor to come in and receive his gubernatorial congratulations.
He supported all of us on the salary he received from from his day job at the Massachusetts Board of Conciliation and Arbitration which handled industrial and job disputes. With his new civil service ranking, he was appointed Chairman of the Board.
Only a few years later, he was invited to join the American Academy of Arbitrators and that was the occasion of the trip to California - to attend his first conference and take my mother with him as a sort of vacation, a rare separation from all of us.
So I understand the apprehension he must have felt and the pressing need to write a will, appoint guardians, and record where his accounts and policies were. What I did not expect were his notes "a few words to each child." What came back with resounding force was the importance of his Catholic faith and passing it on. His presence is palpable in what he said and in his handwriting which is as recognizable to me as my own. I imagine his writing this late one night at the kitchen table.
This is what he said:
Jill, you've been a wonderful daughter, your sense of values are superb. Always have God come first, be kind & considerate and charitable & use your wonderful intellect. All my love.
Kevin, you always tried hard to be good and you were never really bad. Work hard and try hard and you'll be a fine man. Your religion is the best gift we have given to you & always cherish it as you have in the past. All my love.
Debby, in many ways the most thoughtful and kindest of all. But exasperatingly thoughtless at other times, we've always loved you deeply Deb and we know you'll rely upon God to direct your life. All my love.
Billy, a good boy, we're blessed with wonderful children and Billy, you've got the makings of a fine man. Enjoy sports with Kevin & Robbie, be true to God & your faith & remember to work hard for a solid goal in life. All my love.
Sweet Colleen, our most affectionate & a good girl, be kind & thoughtful always & do a good, good job in school as Mother and I want you to make us proud. Say your prayers & cherish your faith. All my love.
Dear Robbie, you've been a good boy & always kind to little Julie. Kev & Billy will help you & teach you gams & when you go to school we know you'll work hard. Be a good Catholic boy. All my love.
Dear little Julie, with your imagination & inquisitiveness you'll be a wonderful student. Jill, Debby & Colleen will teach you how to be a good girl. All my love.
I was 15, Kevin 12, Debby 10, Billy 9, Colly 7, Robby 4, Julie almost 3.
We were fortunate to have him around for an additional thirty years so this will and these notes never came to light until now. A gift to all of us, reminding how powerfully and wonderfully we were all loved. A reminder of how heroic raising children can be.
When I first it, I burst into tears, so moved was I in hearing from him .
Some good advice for those writing their life stories.
The Judgment of Memory by Joseph Bottum
There is some dispute about who coined the description of bad biographies as adding a “new terror to death.” It may have been John Arbuthnot, describing the torrent of miserable, catchpenny books that eighteenth-century publishers issued immediately after the death of anyone famous. Regardless, the phrase ought to have been reserved for the way deceased parents have been treated in the recollections of childhood published over the last decade and a half. Who would risk bringing up literary children, if the reward is those children’s adding this new terror to their parents’ deaths?
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The death of parents leaves their honor in their children’s hands, and the cruel accuracies we might fling in anger against them while they are alive seem even more wrong to use against them once they are gone. “To the living, we owe respect; to the dead, only truth,” Voltaire once opined. It’s a good line: high-minded, confident, sententious in the way only enlightened French philosophes could manage with any aplomb. But it also feels exactly backward, particularly about those we knew and loved. To squabble with our vanished parents about how they lived their lives seems more than a metaphysical nullity. It is, in fact, a moral failing.
If love is true—that is to say, a true thing: a really existing object to which the universe itself must bend—then there remains a place for reticence, and secrets swallowed, and the dead allowed to keep their darkness to themselves.
A new business run by two entrepreneurial moms has popped up to digitally archive your children's drawings reports Springwise.
theART:archives.
How it works? Parents send in their kids’ drawings and theART:archives team professionally photographs each one and sends back a DVD catalogue that can be viewed on a computer screen or TV.
The Library of Congress selects each year the 25 recordings that are "culturally, historically or aesthetically significant" to preserve for all time. The 2007 selections for the National Recording Registry were announced this week.
Among the selections are Harry S. Truman’s legendary address to the Democratic National Convention in 1948; a collection of more than 1,000 radio broadcast recordings by Ronald Reagan before his election to the White House; the first trans-Atlantic radio broadcast in 1925; Michael Jackson’s "Thriller," the best-selling album of all time, produced by the legendary Quincy Jones; the "Sounds of Earth" disc that traveled with Voyager through space; Herbie Hancock’s "Headhunters," which expanded his appeal and became a cross-over hit; one of the few gospel recordings performed by Thomas Dorsey; and the first recording of "Call it Stormy Monday, but Tuesday is Just As Bad."
The full list of the 25 selections are below the fold along with their cultural significance.
Which, if any, would you pick for your own personal legacy archives. I'm not sure, but my favorites below are the original cast recording of My Fair Lady, Pretty Woman by Roy Orbison, Tracks of My Tears by Smokey Robinson and the Sounds of the Earth from the disc prepared for the Voyager spacecraft in 1977.
1. The First Trans-Atlantic Broadcast (March 14, 1925)
Representing a technological breakthrough, this early orchestral broadcast originated in London, traveled by land line to station 5XX in Chelmsford, crossed the Atlantic where it was picked up by an RCA transmitter in Maine, and relayed to stations WJZ in New York and WRC in Washington, D.C. Although the fidelity is low, the recording is significant as a documentation of a technical achievement and a very rare instance of an extant example of a complete radio broadcast of the 1920s. The entire 37-minute broadcast survives on discs in the collections of the University of Maryland’s Library of American Broadcasting.
2. "Allons a Lafayette," Joseph Falcon (1928)
"Allons a Lafayette," a lively two-step, was the first commercial recording of traditional Cajun music. Accordionist Joe Falcon and guitarist Cleoma Breaux, his future wife, recorded this song in a New Orleans field session on April 17, 1928, for Columbia Records. Falcon began playing the accordion as a child and soon became a well-known and sought-after dance hall musician, performing throughout Louisiana and other states. His recording career ended soon after Cleoma’s death, but he continued to play and perform with his second wife, Theresa, until his death in 1965.
3. "Casta Diva," from Bellini’s "Norma"; Rosa Ponselle, accompanied by the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra and Chorus, conducted by Giulio Setti. (recorded December 31, 1928 and, January 30, 1929)
The gifted American soprano Rosa Ponselle was known for her brilliant portrayal of Norma, Bellini’s Druid priestess who sacrifices herself on the funeral pyre of her Roman lover. A native of Connecticut, Ponselle made her Metropolitan Opera debut at the age of 21, playing Leonora opposite Enrico Caruso in "La Forza del Destino." Previously, she and her sister Carmela appeared in vaudeville and in New York film theaters. The breadth of range, warmth and beauty of Ponselle’s art represented vocal perfection to many listeners and earned her a long and successful operatic and recording career.
4. "If I Could Hear My Mother Pray Again," Thomas A. Dorsey (1934)
The acknowledged father of modern gospel music, Thomas A. Dorsey made only a handful of gospel recordings himself. Recording first as "Georgia Tom" and "Barrelhouse Tom," Dorsey was a noted blues artist and composer during the 1920s and early 1930s. In 1932, he dedicated the remainder of his life exclusively to gospel music. In four sessions in 1932 and 1934, Dorsey recorded several songs for Vocalion, including his popular composition, "If I Could Hear My Mother Pray Again," which were released under his own name. His voice, although well-suited to his earlier blues and jazz recordings, was said to have lacked the qualities needed for gospel music and he made no further recordings, concentrating instead on songwriting and publishing. (Thomas Dorsey is not related to big-band leader Tommy Dorsey.)
5. "Sweet Lorraine," Art Tatum (rec. February 22, 1940)
People who listened to an Art Tatum record often wondered if it featured multiple pianists. Tatum's cascading runs up and down the keyboard, the scales, arpeggios, broken bass lines and two-fisted piano choruses, often taken at blistering speeds, gave this impression. Although contemporary critics found his playing "ornate" and devoid of improvisation, Tatum won his spurs as a jazz pianist. "Sweet Lorraine" is one of his signature tunes. Its relaxed tempo allows one to hear and follow all the typical Tatum action, including the harmonies and dissonances that give any Tatum performance undisputed originality.
6. Fibber’s Closet Opens for the First Time, "Fibber McGee and Molly" radio program (March 4, 1940)
The hall closet at 79 Wistful Vista, home of Fibber McGee and Molly (played by Jim and Marion Jordan) was the source of one of radio’s most successful running gags and America’s best-known pile of junk. The effect played on the strength of the sound medium. Frank Pittman, the program’s sound-effects engineer, created the comic catastrophe. The initial click of the door latch tantalizingly opened the routine. Then the thump of several boxes hitting the floor followed and grew to a crescendo of falling bric-a-brac increasing in speed and intensity until the victim was buried under a mountain of pots, pans, fish poles, dumbbells, skates, pie pans and coffee pots. The coda of the avalanche was the tinkling of a little bell. The gag was so effective that crowded, cluttered storage areas in homes are still compared by some to the closet of Fibber McGee.
7. Wings Over Jordan, Wings Over Jordan (1941)
The Wings Over Jordan choir was founded in 1935 by Rev. Glenn T. Settle, pastor of the Gethsemane Baptist Church in Cleveland, Ohio. In 1937, they began appearing on the radio program, "The Negro Hour," singing spirituals and other traditional gospel songs on local station WGAR. By 1938, the choir had become nationally known, broadcasting on CBS. The show, renamed "Wings Over Jordan," featured prominent African-American artists and scholars as well as choir selections. It ran until 1947. Many of these radio programs can be studied and appreciated today because they were pressed as electrical transcriptions and for broadcasts by the Armed Forces Radio Network.
8. Fiorello LaGuardia reading the comics (1945)
Fiorello LaGuardia, the effervescent mayor who is credited with building modern New York City, regularly took to the radio to communicate directly with the citizens of the city. One of LaGuardia’s most recounted acts as mayor was when he read the comics to the children of the city on WNYC radio during the 1945 newspaper delivery strike. He performed animated, dramatic readings, describing the action in the panels, creating different voices and adding excitement with various sound effects. This benevolent image of LaGuardia was immortalized in the opening scene of the Pulitzer Prize-winning musical "Fiorello!" Surviving recordings of LaGuardia reading the comics are held in the WNYC Collection of New York’s Municipal Archives.
9. "Call it Stormy Monday but Tuesday is Just As Bad," T-Bone Walker (1947)
The first recording of this blues standard was made by the Black and White label in Los Angeles on Sept. 14, 1947. Backing up Walker on the session are Lloyd C. Glenn on piano, Bumps Myers on tenor sax and Teddy Buckner playing a muted trumpet. This lineup adds a strong jazz inflection to the recording. The song was reinterpreted with great success by a wide range of blues, rock and jazz recording artists, including Bobby Blue Bland, Lou Rawls, The Allman Brothers and Kenny Burrell.
10. Harry S. Truman speech at the 1948 Democratic National Convention (July 15, 1948)
Prior to the 1948 Democratic Convention, President Truman’s popularity was low and political commentators were sure that Thomas Dewey would easily win the presidential election. One of Truman’s advisors admitted that the president had a "speaking problem" -- he relied too heavily on prepared scripts and his delivery was rushed and occasionally unintelligible. In this speech, Truman worked only from a loose script and, as a result, he found his natural voice. In a down-to-earth and direct manner, which included colloquialisms from his home state of Missouri, the feisty president predicted, "Senator Barkley and I will win this election and make the Republicans like it. Don’t you forget it." The applause lasted for a full two minutes. Defying many predictions, Truman won re-election.
11. "The Jazz Scene," various artists (1949)
At a time when many 78-rpm discs were still sold in plain brown sleeves, producer Norman Granz released this limited-edition album set that included commissioned line drawings by David Stone Martin, large photographs by Gjon Mili and 12 sides of the most innovative jazz of the time. While illustrated album sets were not new at the time, the lavishness of this release was unique. Among the artists represented on the set are Duke Ellington, Lester Young, Charlie Parker, Bud Powell, Max Roach, Machito and Coleman Hawkins (who plays an unaccompanied tenor sax solo). The presence on the album of Machito’s selection "Tanga" points to the increasing significance of Afro-Cuban jazz in the late 1940s. During that time, Charlie Parker had recorded with Machito and his arranger/trumpeter Mario Bauza. Many other jazz musicians, most notably Dizzy Gillespie, would make important recordings of Afro-Cuban jazz.
12. "It Wasn’t God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels," Kitty Wells (recorded May 30, 1952)
An "answer song" to Hank Thompson’s country hit "Wild Side of Life," which criticized a woman who gave up true love for the lure of the honky-tonk, Kitty Wells’s "It Wasn’t God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels" argues that wayward men are to blame when women stray. Wells’s breakthrough hit established her as a major star and, more importantly, markedly broadened the range of subject matter considered appropriate for female country singers. The recording paved the way for increasingly frank songs by Loretta Lynn, Tammy Wynette and other female country music stars.
13. "My Fair Lady," original cast recording (1956)
The original cast recording of "My Fair Lady" marks a high point in almost every aspect of the collaborations that produced it. It boasts a magnificent score by lyricist Alan Jay Lerner and composer Frederick Loewe—witty, intelligent, beautiful, and romantic. Brilliantly orchestrated by Robert Russell Bennett and Philip J. Lang, it captures landmark performances by Julie Andrews, Rex Harrison and Stanley Holloway. The recording itself was wonderfully produced under the supervision of prescient producer Goddard Lieberson, who convinced Columbia to underwrite most of the costs of the original production. Columbia’s initial investment of $360,000 generated tens of millions of dollars in profit. The recording established a new relationship between Broadway productions and record companies; the album’s critical success and popularity with the public were unrivaled at the time.
14. Navajo Shootingway Ceremony Field Recordings, recorded by David McAllester (1957-1958)
Anthropologist David McAllester may have produced the only recordings of the deeply sacred Navajo healing ceremony in Arizona in the late 1950s. McAllester's recordings of Shootingway, one of the most complex in the Navajo ceremonial system, included the nine-day ceremonial event as well as detailed discussions about preparations, procedures, needed sacred paraphernalia, the reciting of all of the prayers, and singing of all of the songs in order. McAllester's collection includes eight different versions of the lengthy Blessingway ceremony, two of the Shootingway, other traditional ceremonies and many examples of contemporary genres in which he was also interested. This collection now resides at Wesleyan University where it became the core of the World Music Archives.
15. "‘Freight Train,’ and Other North Carolina Folk Songs and Tunes," Elizabeth Cotten (1959)
The debut album of singer, songwriter and guitarist Elizabeth Cotten was released when she was over 60 years old. A self-taught guitarist, her expressive two-finger picking style was enormously influential on folk song guitarists. Cotten was a popular performer during the folk music revival of the 1960s and a major inspiration to many aspiring musicians of the time. Cotten, who wrote "Freight Train" at the age of 12, was inspired by living next to the railroad tracks.
16. Marine Band Concert Album to Help Benefit the National Cultural Center (1963)
In 1963 the United States Army, Navy, Marine and Air Force bands and choruses were engaged (by special permission) to make albums of American music which would be sold to help fund the National Cultural Center (later the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts). The Marine Band had just returned from an extensive tour of the U.S. and was in prime form. The resulting recording by Herman Diaz, Jr., the legendary producer for RCA Victor, is considered by many experts as one of the finest recordings in band history because of the incredible sound quality of the recording.
17. "Oh, Pretty Woman," Roy Orbison (1964)
The last of Roy Orbison’s string of hits for Monument records, "Oh, Pretty Woman" was his most enduring recording. Orbison and co-writer Bill Dees tapped out the initial rhythm of the song while sitting at Orbison’s kitchen table. In the recorded version, this became the infectious and well-known opening guitar riff and propulsive drum beat. Artists as varied as Al Green, John Mayall and Van Halen have performed the song, and 2 Live Crew sampled the opening on their 1989 album, "As Clean as They Wanna Be." That appropriation, made without authorization, led to a U. S. Supreme Court case (Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music, Inc.), which ruled in 1994 that the commercial song parody qualified as fair use under Section 107 of the U. S. copyright law.
18. "Tracks of My Tears," Smokey Robinson and the Miracles (1965)
William "Smokey" Robinson wrote, produced and performed some of the sweetest, most poetic and enduring love songs in rhythm and blues history. "Tracks of My Tears" is highlighted by Robinson’s velvety high tenor voice and his heartbreaking lyrics. It captures the peak of Robinson’s talent. His smooth voice conveys the passion and pain required to maintain a false, happy exterior after a romantic breakup. He heightens the effect when he sweeps into his remarkable falsetto. The recording won numerous awards and is considered to be among the best recordings by the Miracles. "Tracks of My Tears" further emphasized the influence of Detroit soul on American popular music, a position attained by the recordings produced by Motown Records.
19. "You’ll Sing a Song and I’ll Sing a Song," Ella Jenkins (1966)
Performer and educator Ella Jenkins has been leading children on musical journeys around the world for more than 50 years. Her call-and-response songs, and gentle soothing voice, encourage children to join in and sing along, overcoming any shyness or reluctance they might have. Singing with Ella, children have learned songs from a variety of cultures and in many languages. Her vast repertoire of songs includes nursery rhymes, folk songs and chants as well as her own original songs. In keeping with the policy of its record label, Folkways, "You’ll Sing a Song and I’ll Sing a Song" has remained in print since it was first published in 1966.
20. "Music from the Morning of the World," various artists; recorded by David Lewiston (1966)
The first recording in the celebrated Nonesuch Explorer Series, "Music from the Morning of the World" was one of the first attempts to offer "international music" and, in particular, ethnic field recordings as entertainment for commercial recording listeners. The series exposed listeners to new musical idioms and non-Western classical music, and set high standards for recording quality and accompanying written documentation. "Music from the Morning of the World" provided many listeners with their first exposure to Balinese gamelan music and the unforgettably compelling "monkey chant."
21. "For the Roses," Joni Mitchell (1972)
In "For the Roses," Joni Mitchell took the confessional lyrics of her critically-acclaimed "Blue" album and infused them with touches of jazz. The result is a mélange of folk, rock, jazz and country that retains the heartfelt tone of her earlier work, but presents it on a broader canvas. While Mitchell later delved more deeply into jazz, "For the Roses" remains the album in which all the elements of her creative palette are in perfect balance.
22. "Headhunters," Herbie Hancock (1973)
"Headhunters" is a pivotal work of Herbie Hancock’s career. It was his first true fusion recording. Possessing all the sensibilities of jazz, but with R&B and funk soul rhythms, "Headhunters" had a mass appeal that made it the greatest-selling jazz album in history at the time of its release. The recording is notable for its use of an extremely wide range of instruments, including electric synthesizers which brought that new instrument to the forefront of jazz for the first time. Hancock’s experiments caused controversy among jazz purists, many of whom at the time belittled it as "pop." "Headhunters" proved to be influential not only to jazz, but also to funk, soul and hip-hop.
23. Ronald Reagan Radio Broadcasts (1976-1979)
This collection of over 1,000 radio broadcast recordings, the majority penned by Ronald Reagan himself, documents the development of his political vision in the years immediately preceding his election to the White House. In the broadcasts Reagan sounded what would become the familiar themes of his presidency: reduction of government spending, tax cuts, supply-side economics and anti-communism. These radio "chats" did not focus on specific policy prescriptions, as much as outlining a conservative governing philosophy, much of which remains with the Republican Party to this day. Also showcased is Reagan’s conversational, folksy rhetorical style, which added measurably to his public appeal.
24. "The Sounds of Earth," disc prepared for the Voyager spacecraft (1977)
Never released to the public, this disc was prepared to introduce aurally our planet to any alien intelligence that might encounter the Voyager spacecraft many millions of years in the future. The disc contains encoded photographs, spoken messages, music and sounds. There are greetings delivered from around the world in 55 languages. The sound essay includes life sounds (EEGs and EKGs), birds, elephants, whales, volcanoes, rain and a baby. The 90 minutes of music features selections from ragas, Navajo Indian chants, Java court gamelan, Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No. 2, a Peruvian Woman’s Wedding song, and Chuck Berry’s "Johnny B. Goode."
25. "Thriller," Michael Jackson (1982)
Michael Jackson’s second album with legendary producer Quincy Jones attained stratospheric national and international success. Featuring outstanding performances by Paul McCartney on "The Girl is Mine" and a metallic Eddie Van Halen guitar lead on "Beat It," the album’s influence on the record industry and subsequent popular music is immeasurable. The album also includes the strong disco-inflected "Billie Jean" and the compelling title track "Thriller," featuring an eerie voice-over by Vincent Price. Jackson’s keen pop sensibilities, performances by a wide range of talented musicians and Quincy Jones’ expert production all contributed to making "Thriller" the best-selling album of all time.
After the extraordinary reception to the Beloved Professor Delivering His Last Lecture Jeffrey Zaslow teamed up with Randy Pausch to co-write the new book,
"The Last Lecture" (Randy Pausch, Jeffrey Zaslow)
Zaslow reports that Pausch is finding more difficult to say goodbye to his family than he did to his colleagues at work.
Zaslow asks "When death is near, how do we show our love?" in A Final Farwell
For many of us, his lecture has become a reminder that our own futures are similarly -- if not as drastically -- brief. His fate is ours, sped up.
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People wrote about how his lecture had inspired them to spend more time with loved ones, to quit pitying themselves, or even to shake off suicidal urges. Terminally ill people said the lecture had persuaded them to embrace their own goodbyes, and as Randy said, "to keep having fun every day I have left, because there's no other way to play it."
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Years ago, Jai had suggested that Randy compile his advice into a book for her and the kids. She wanted to call it "The Manual." Now, in the wake of the lecture, others were also telling Randy that he had a book in him--
"Well, you also need emotional insurance," the minister explained. The premiums for that insurance would be paid for with Randy's time, not his money. The minister suggested that Randy spend hours making videotapes of himself with the kids. Years from now, they will be able to see how easily they touched each other and laughed together.
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Randy also made a point of talking to people who lost parents when they were very young. They told him they found it consoling to learn about how much their mothers and fathers loved them. The more they knew, the more they could still feel that love. To that end, Randy built separate lists of his memories of each child. He also has written down his advice for them, things like: "If I could only give three words of advice, they would be, 'Tell the truth.' If I got three more words, I'd add, 'All the time.' "
The advice he's leaving for Chloe includes this: "When men are romantically interested in you, it's really simple. Just ignore everything they say and only pay attention to what they do." Chloe, not yet 2 years old, may end up having no memory of her father. "But I want her to grow up knowing," Randy said, "that I was the first man ever to fall in love with her."
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As he later explained it: "I am maintaining my clear-eyed sense of the inevitable. I'm living like I'm dying. But at the same time, I'm very much living like I'm still living."
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And so despite all his goodbyes, he has found solace in the idea that he'll remain a presence. "Kids, more than anything else, need to know their parents love them," he said. "Their parents don't have to be alive for that to happen."
The Last Lecture website.
Cross-posted at Business of Life
On Marketplace radio yesterday, reporter Curt Nickish has an interesting piece about online obituaries called Another nail in newspapers' coffin about a new site now in beta called Tributes where people can place online obituaries, "keeping the memories alive".
When Jeff Taylor who started Monster.com, he moved help wanted ads from newspapers to the web.
Now he's trying to do the same thing with obituaries after not doing so well with Eons, a website targeted to those over 50.
In browsing through the obit section on Eons, looking for someone to interview, he came across the obituary I had posted about my mother with links to the three blog posts I had done about her.
That is how I came to be interviewed and how my mother's photo is now posted on Marketplace radio. Interestingly it nothing to do with the work I'm doing or the book I'm writing.
You can hear my lovely voice, part of the interview here.
Only on the market for a year, the Flip camcorder has already garnered 13% of the market. David Pogue finally reviews it, Camcorder Brings Zen to the Shoot.
the Flip has been reduced to the purest essence of video capture. You turn it on, and it’s ready to start filming in two seconds. You press the red button once to record (press hard — it’s a little balky) and once to stop. You press Play to review the video, and the Trash button to delete a clip.
There it is: the entire user’s manual.
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Having finally lived with the Flip, I finally know the answer: it’s a blast. It’s always ready, always with you, always trustworthy. Instead of crippling this “camcorder,” the simplicity elevates it. Comparisons with a real camcorder are nonsensical, because the Flip is something else altogether: it’s the video equivalent of a Kodak point-and-shoot camera. It’s the very definition of “less is more.”
"Flip Video Camcorder: 60-Minutes (Black)" (Pure Digital Technologies, Inc.)
$150-$180
Photo from an exhibit at the Newark Museum by Frank Maresca of found snapshots taken between the 1920s and 1960s.
Asked to discuss the immediacy and urgency of snapshots, he says: “When people look at snapshots, whether of their own making or those made by others, the effect is so powerful that the viewer feels as if they are having an out-of-body and out-of-time experience. You see it happen all the time. The snapshot just may be Everyman’s eternity.”
Making Sense of Other People's Memories
Reliving the past that is the most fantastic adventure of all. The event, relived, grows more and more enigmatic, and richer and richer in meaning. Turning to the past, I reach the future, I recall people I never knew.
From a review by David Marcus of the new book, A Guest in My Own Country: A Hungarian Life by George Konrad.
At the end of the memoir, Konrád asks, “Where is home?” we know the answer. Memory is home.
"A Guest in My Own Country: A Hungarian Life" (George Konrad)
What people want is some memorial to the significance of their lives. When a group of high school students led by an inspired teacher set up a poetry stand for poetry on demand, the results are heart-warming.
Poetry Stand
There’s a Japanese film I love called After Life. In the movie, people who have recently died reside for a week in an institutional building, where they must choose one moment from their lives in which to dwell for eternity. The hard-working staff of the afterlife must then create a short film of each person’s moment, which the newly dead view at the end of the week, before departing. What I love most is how unpolished these films are — the budget is low, the production time is short, and the staff members are not really filmmakers — and yet how effectively they do the job of evoking the joy people associate with their chosen memories. One man’s happiest moment comes while riding in a plane. In his film, the clouds are obviously fabric dangling from fat strings beside the windowless fuselage. But it works — it triggers the memory for the man, who sheds tears of joy as he heads into eternity.
I think those 13 teenagers were doing something similar at the poetry stand that afternoon in Princeton: dutifully listening to their customers, noting specifics, and trying their best to fashion a poem to memorialize a part of a life. I wish you could have seen a middle-aged woman who had recently lost her son asking Haley for something to comfort her widowed daughter-in-law. How hard Haley worked on that poem while the woman stood waiting.
In five years a quarter of the entertainment being produced will be "circular" according to a study by Nokia. It will be created, shared and edited within peer groups. The audience becomes immersed and the creative experience participatory.
says Mother Pie in a terrific post American Cultural Soup followed by another on the new American "immersive and recursive" creative style, with its roots in geek culture and its digital tools.
We record and share, "stretching our moments by making them part of the present, future and past," our lives and works ever open to editing, reiteration, recycling and mashups.
More of us are becoming creative and discovering the joy of "immersive participatory creation", creative play in the digital world whether we're home alone or collaborating with family members.
That collaboration does even have to take place in your own life time.
Think of how Natalie Cole mixed her own voice with her father's when to sing his top song in her album Unforgettable. That 'collaboration' duet took place 25 years after he died.
"Unforgettable: With Love" (Natalie Cole)
She won seven Grammy awards in 1992 for the album and the song.
Kevin Kelly's blog Cool Tools is a favorite of mine because I'm always finding good information about products and services that make life easier.
He's found a service that can scan your old photos and slides cheaply called Scancafe.
I wrote a much longer post with excerpts and photos but for some reason I'm unable to post it despite several tries over the past week
I have a big crate of old slides and photo albums just waiting to be scanned. So far, I've taken a number of slides to my neighborhood camera store for a specific project and been pleased with the results.
So until my next big project, I'm going to hold off, but I'd be interested in the experience of anyone who uses them.
When the demolition guys found an old suitcase, tucked into a crawl space, they opened it up to find photo albums, a yearbook, a college paper or two, and several photos. For some reason, they kept it though they didn't know who it belonged to until, a year later, Dan Barnett started googling and calling.
Lost and found, a lifetime of memories
And there they were, those construction workers in their heavy boots, those guys with scarred hands who tear down and rip out, respectfully watching the white-haired lawyer.
Shaughnessy's father died in 1985, and his mother died two years later.
Now, two decades after their deaths, he was staring silently at their unearthed pictures, confronting memories of his past.
Ronni Bennett writes that blogging gives shape to our lives.
My great Aunt Edith and I exchanged weekly letters for 25 years. She was my favorite, most trusted older relative and I poured out my heart to her about every good and bad thing that happened to me from age 15 on.
Visiting her one time when I was about 40, she announced that I was “old enough now for these” as she handed me a box with every letter I’d written her through all those years – essentially my own biography in my own hand and the most precious gift she ever gave me.
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Although it is an imperative for elders, making sense of ourselves and giving shape to our lives is what writing has always been about at any age. Blogging gives that need a new dimension through the medium itself and the sharing of our thoughts with so many others than personal letters allow.
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I think bloggers – old and young – intuitively know this, and that our blogs are on the bleeding edge of a renaissance in personal writing. Our blogs (and saved emails) will become as important to our loved ones as be-ribboned letters were in the past.
YouTube is becoming a terrific resource for those who are using multimedia to tell the stories of their lives.
Take the Original Mickey Mouse Club TV introduction for example. Watching it, I can remember the excitement I felt as a little girl. I was so enamored of the Club and the Mousekeeters, Doreen and Annette being my favorites, that my best friend Kathy and I practiced routines in the back yard so that we would be ready for the talent scouts we were sure were coming to our hometown.
Joan Didion wrote, "We tell stories in order to live." We all tell stories. It is how we storytellers make sense of our lives and what's happened to us.
Stories are the best way to keep memories alive as Patty Digh knows and writes in Remember Daddy
Besides the loss, obvious though that is to any of us who have suffered the death of someone we love, the worse thing about someone so important dying is the very idea - the very chilling incomprehensible thought - that people will forget them.
By telling his stories, and passing them along to Emma and Tess - and to you - he lives on. That's my job. It is all we have besides small luggage tags with his handwriting, photographs, a red corduroy shirt, his Mickey Mouse watch. Let's pass stories along, shall we?
That's what Sally Jacobs, The Practical Archivist, calls photographs trapped inside those sticky magnetic photo albums that used to be so popular.
Acidic cardboard covered in stripes of acidic glue on the back, smothered in a vinyl sheet that is so chemically volatile it stinks. Oy. Fortunately, this is one of the few hands-on conservation projects that's easy enough for non-experts to tackle successfully
Some other tips from Sally Jacobs in preserving one of a kind family photographs
1. You can't keep it all. Be your own editor. Don't be afraid to lose the dreck.
2. If it's worth keeping, it's worth treating right
3. The shortest pencil is better than the longest memory
4. Digital is more fragile than you think, "Scan your prints and print your digitals".
From eclexys via The Practical Archivist
I would have loved to read my grandparents’ blogs, seen their photostreams, watched their videoblogs one by one. Beautiful anachronism, and wonderful to experience people whose genes you share, who live in another time that, in some ways, feels more like another place.
To hell with posterity. I love imagining even just one of my grandchildren, or great-grandchildren, or farther-off descendants, reading my blog and this long-ago person snapping into clearer, bizarrely intimate focus.
We’ve leaving voices to echo through time. That is, if bitrot doesn’t set in first. And that, to me, makes blogging somewhat less strange, and somewhat more beautiful.
The young and the old have the most free time to spend on the Internet, the young because they have no responsibilities, the old because their responsibilities are over.
I find it a very encouraging sign that more and more seniors are turning to the Internet to preserve their legacies, usually in written form, sometimes orally, often on blogs.
With the spectacular success of YouTube, more seniors are preserving what they know in video form. Take Paul Gordon, 92, who wanted to show off the piano he made or Bayle "Bubbe" Shere who has recipes she wants to share. Then, of course, there's Millie who's been blogging and videoblogging for years now at My Mom's Blog thanks to her son Steve Garfield.
Seniors 65 are the fastest growing segment of people going online probably because everyone else is already there. 39% of all seniors have internet access and once they learn how easy the taping and uploading is, watch out.
Since I putting together a book of my mother's favorite recipes complete with photos of her, the dishes and some of the handwritten recipe cards, this article by Ellen Claire Girardaeu stood out.
I can make a fine beef and vegetable soup because Mother wrote out the recipe in minute detail for me, and I can read.
The Perfect Recipe for Warm Memories
The handwritten ones are especially dear to me. They conjure the presence of the people who wrote them. Sharon's oatmeal chocolate chip cookies, Bobbye Raye's "petticoat tails" (which I think is just a cute name for shortbread, but the recipe works, while most shortbread recipes don't), Joan's nuclear black bean salad -- all are in the book. But Mother's soup has pride of place.
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It is hard to explain exactly how much finding Mother's soup recipe meant to me. Seeing her writing, reading the funny little asides that wouldn't make sense to anyone else and don't make much sense even to me, is like having her standing before me. Maybe the touch of her hand still warms the paper a tiny bit. All I know is that the recipe brings my mother to life for a moment, and that is enough.
From Springwise, a great new idea.
Voice Quilt combines high-tech and high touch to make it easy for people to create highly personal audio gifts for friends and family.
The process is simple. Customers set up an account at voicequilt.com. They purchase phone time and issue an invitation to friends and family, providing them with the toll-free phone number they need to call to record their message. Phone time costs from USD 9.95 for a MiniQuilt (3-5 Messages, ½ hr), to USD 34.95 for a Community Quilt (40-50 Messages, 3 hrs). The customer then listens to the recordings and creates a playlist. Once the playlist has been finalized, the Voice Quilt is shipped to the recipient on a CD (USD 11.95), inside a wooden keepsake box (USD 79.95 – 139.95), or downloaded from the internet (no extra cost).
Founder Hope Flammer came up with the idea after her best friend’s husband became ill and lapsed into a coma. She accompanied her friend to the hospital every day to visit with him, speaking, laughing and playing his favourite music as if he were awake and participating in the conversation with them. Fortunately he recovered. “I came away from that experienced convinced that loving voices can make a difference,” Hope says. “Preserved for years to come, the greetings and memories of close friends can remind us of special times. A family story, a child's laughter, a best friend's quirky expressions... these are sounds that nurture the spirit.”
Voice Quilt’s strength lies in its simplicity. One person arranges everything online, and the others just dial in whenever it suits them: it's as easy as leaving voice mail. One to set up locally!
VoiceQuilt Check it out.
The body of Julia Campbell, 40, a Peace Corps volunteer, was found in a shallow grave in a remote area of the Philippines.
Soldiers uncovered her body close to the village after a 10-day search. Her feet were protruding from the soil.
"Theory is she was killed," Beth Cedo, a spokeswoman for the police, said in a mobile phone text message.
No kidding.
Fortunately for her family, her friends and those who want to read about a woman who left all behind for a time to help others, she left a weblog, Julia in the Philippines.
Those who knew her and loved her can learn more about her life and what she thought and draw closer to her even as they mourn her loss.
R.I.P.
Roger Scruton writes Why I became a conservative
Rightly understood, he argued, society is a partnership among the dead, the living, and the unborn, and without what he called the “hereditary principle,” according to which rights could be inherited as well as acquired, both the dead and the unborn would be disenfranchized. Indeed, respect for the dead was, in Burke’s view, the only real safeguard that the unborn could obtain, in a world that gave all its privileges to the living. His preferred vision of society was not as a contract, in fact, but as a trust, with the living members as trustees of an inheritance that they must strive to enhance and pass on.
He travels to Prague in 1975
Perhaps the most fascinating and terrifying aspect of Communism was its ability to banish truth from human affairs, and to force whole populations to “live within the lie,” as President Havel put it.
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To me it was the greatest revelation, when first I travelled to Czechoslovakia in 1979, to come face to face with a situation in which people could, at any moment, be removed from the book of history, in which truth could not be uttered, and in which the Party could decide from day to day not only what would happen tomorrow, but also what had happened today, what had happened yesterday, and what had happened before its leaders had been born.
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the dissidents were acutely conscious of the value of memory. Their lives were an exercise in what Plato calls anamnesis: the bringing to consciousness of forgotten things.
From by Roger Scruton
In My Mother's Small House Are Mansions of Memory
In her 92nd year, my mother's happenstance collages of her life are steadily growing both richer and deeper....a jumble of clips, slogans, photos, handicrafts and images. Aside from its complexity, it wouldn't mean all that much to you. These icons of other people's private lives never do.
It's unlikely you have a 92-year-old tennis-playing mother like Gerard does, but likely you have people in your family who have their own collages. Ask them about their collection of stuff. You may learn something very interesting about how they think.
If you want to plan a family reunion, Sue Shellenberger in the Wall Street Journal suggests you make a long-term plan, a year or 18 months out. That way, people can organize their over-stuffed calendars around the event.
Reunions Magazine has a website with helpful tips and resources.
You can even set up your own reunion website at myevent.com.
Be prepared though for infection. When far flung and extended families get together for reunions, members often catch the contagious genealogy bug, symptoms of which include
The genealogy bug is not fatal, though it may last a lifetime. Some call it a 'grave' disease.
Organizing family history material can be daunting, especially when several people and families are involved. A website is just too clunky. Blogs work the best.
Bill Ives, a former academic psychologist, became an independent consultant, an expert on knowledge management when he began blogging, the love of which set him on a path to Web 2.0 that included business blogging, blog coaching and pod consulting with plenty of time left over for restaurant blogging.
Now he has taken his experience and expertise to begin two family blogs. Check out how he expands his family's history on both sides via blogs.
Ives Family History Blog
Sharpe Family in NC
Each post is a little history lesson on an ancestor, an essay or a photo or illustration. Because blogs offer the ability to add tags and categories, they are a wonderfully cheap content management tool where you can find what you're looking for quickly through an embedded search tool or through a category search. By publishing on the web, Bill has opened up his research to other family members and those who find him while researching their own family histories.
Using technology, he's expanded his resources and his reach, now and in the future. Or as one wag said, "genealogy is collecting dead relatives and an occasional live cousin."
Slate is having a memoir week about people who have written and published memoirs. They asked a group of memoir writers whether or not they alerted family members and friends that they were writing about them.
Usually published memoirs incorporate imaginative renderings to flesh out characters and conversations, so how family and friends reacted becomes quite interesting. Those of you who are beginning to write your own memoir, not for publication, but for yourself and your family, will want to take a look.
Daneille Trussoni wrote a memoir about her relationship with her father who was a tunnel rat in Vietnam while she was living in Sofia, Bulgaria, after extensive research but had few conversations with family members or her father after he developed throat cancer
Sean Wilsey wrote
The way most memoirists have handled still-living people has been to outlive them and then publish. Or publish, then flee.
Yet Wilsey interviewed just about everyone he could think of to write about his mother who when she read the manuscript felt betrayed but was big enough to say
Sean, it's such an accurate portrait of so many people that I know that I've had to conclude it must be an accurate portrait of me, too. And so I'm really going to have to take a look at the fact that I come across that way."
His stepmother hired a lawyer and threatened to sue.
John Dickerson wrote about his mother Nancy Dickerson
The book I wanted to write was about a journey from an angry kid to the adult who came to love this amazing woman.
Watching old film he found himself
rooting for her as if she were the child and I the parent.
When Frank McCourt wrote Angela's Ashes
I was denounced from hill, pulpit, and barstool. Certain citizens claimed I had disgraced the fair name of the city of Limerick, that I had attacked the church, that I had despoiled my mother's name, and that if I returned to Limerick, I would surely be found hanging from a lamppost.
It's easier to digitize your old photos than ever before.
First there were scanners and the price was right, about $100-$150.
Still scanning hundreds can be tedious. If you have thousands, it's just too much.
Now there are services to do all that scanning for you. You can mail them away, but who's really comfortable sending all their precious family photos to the mail, or even FedEx
Now, your neighborhood camera store can digitize 500 photos for about $50 thanks to new high end scanners from Kodak.
A Lifetime of Photos on a Single Disc
New Services Cheaply, Quickly Digitize Troves of Snapshots; Throwing Away the Shoebox
The Griot Project is set to record 2000 oral stories from black families
StoryCorps and the National Museum of African American History and Culture yesterday announced a collaboration to record stories of African Americans.
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The new initiative is called the StoryCorps Griot project. Over the next year the organizers plan to collect nearly 2,000 stories, principally from World War II veterans and those who were part of the civil rights movement. It is believed to be the largest effort to collect oral histories from African Americans since the Federal Writers' Project in the 1930s.
StoryCorps is a simple idea. The person talks about life's questions," said Dave Isay, who started the national oral history effort in 2003. In New York, StoryCorps has set up story booths in Grand Central Terminal and at the World Trade Center site where visitors can tell their own recollections of events, people and their families. "Our stories, the stories of ordinary people are just as important as Paris Hilton and other stories the media feeds us," Isay said.
When are you going to do your stories?
Ann Hornaday in the Washington Post has some handy rules for YouTube videos that you should keep in mind when you make videos for your legacy archives.
Rules for YouTube: Make Art, Not Bore
Mean it
Your limitations are your strengths
Indulge the arcane
Resist facile irony
Take us to another world
Be a star
You made us laugh, you've made us link, now make us think.
Brevity and wit should never trump soul.
See what happens when you don't write down where you put something for safekeeping and keep a backup copy.
NASA can't find the original tapes of Neil Armstrong on the Moon.
The original ones were much sharper and more detailed than the blurry ones we are familiar with.
Wouldn't all of us love to have a journal, a memoir, a letter, from those we have loved and lost? Shouldn't all of us leave a bit of that behind?
Anna Qundlen in Write For Your Life.
in the age of the telephone most communication became evanescent, gone into thin air no matter how important or heartfelt. Think of all those people inside the World Trade Center saying goodbye by phone. If only, in the blizzard of paper that followed the collapse of the buildings, a letter had fallen from the sky for every family member and friend, something to hold on to, something to read and reread. Something real. Words on paper confer a kind of immortality.
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That's also what writing is: not just a legacy, but therapy. As the novelist Don DeLillo once said, "Writing is a form of personal freedom. It frees us from the mass identity we see in the making all around us. In the end, writers will write not to be outlaw heroes of some underculture but mainly to save themselves, to survive as individuals."
Each of us would do well the cultivate an awareness of the death so as to do those necessary things to make the future lives of our children and easier and to live our lives more fully and gratefully. While we should do this, not enough of us do.
The people who do so on a regular basis are those men and women in our military service..
Here's what J.B. Smith wrote, A Soldier's Thoughts
I went to Iraq prepared to die. A former soldier called out of the Individual Ready Reserve (IRR), I was a supporter of the war and ready and willing to do my part. I got into decent physical shape, signed my medical waivers, and volunteered for the job of training Iraqi Troops and taking them into combat. I had no illusions as to the potential price I, or my wife and 2-year-old daughter might have to pay. I made my burial wishes known and wrote about 50 letters to my daughter, dated and spaced to guide her through the challenges which I knew would come in life. I made peace with the plausibility of my death, content in my knowledge that our mission was critical for the ultimate stability of the world and the best course available for American security.
When my daughter was 26, she would finally receive the letter explaining my attitudes towards the war and how I felt about my death. This is the phrase which I believe best captured it:
"In order to secure the American people, democracy had to be spread to the region because democratic governments are far less prone to going to war and they are far less prone to internal strife and violence. The process couldn't help but be messy, but it was necessary. Obviously, I don't know how this experiment works out, but you do. If Iraq is a democratic nation now, or if Iran, Syria, Lebanon, Saudi, Kuwait, or one of the others has become democratic, then the war was worth it. However, if we pulled out because we lost too many soldiers and got out in an act of political expediency, then I did die in vain."
Share Grandma's Birthday with Music and Animation
Unlike many other photo-sharing services, Smilebox does not require users to upload photos to the Web site and edit them there. Rather, since users download the template, they need only drag images to the desired locations on the template, then upload the entire file to the Web site. Smilebox then delivers e-mail messages to the user’s friends and family, inviting them to view the book.
Check it out Smilebox
You really realize how important keeping a personal legacy archive is when you read about First Sgt. Charles King who kept a journal for his baby son Jordan when he first deployed to Iraq.
This drawing he did will be how his son imagines him.
For his son Jordan, these words his father took time to write down will be how he will come to know his father who was killed by an ICD.
His fiance Dana Canedy writes "From Father to Son, Last Words to Live By".
On paper, Charles revealed himself in a way he rarely did in person. He thought hard about what to say to a son who would have no memory of him. Even if Jordan will never hear the cadence of his father’s voice, he will know the wisdom of his words.
Never be ashamed to cry. No man is too good to get on his knee and humble himself to God. Follow your heart and look for the strength of a woman.
Charles tried to anticipate questions in the years to come. Favorite team? I am a diehard Cleveland Browns fan. Favorite meal? Chicken, fried or baked, candied yams, collard greens and cornbread. Childhood chores? Shoveling snow and cutting grass. First kiss? Eighth grade.
In neat block letters, he wrote about faith and failure, heartache and hope. He offered tips on how to behave on a date and where to hide money on vacation. Rainy days have their pleasures, he noted: Every now and then you get lucky and catch a rainbow.
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Toward women, he displayed an old-fashioned chivalry, something he expected of our son. Remember who taught you to speak, to walk and to be a gentleman, he wrote to Jordan in his journal. These are your first teachers, my little prince. Protect them, embrace them and always treat them like a queen.
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The 18th was a long, solemn night, he wrote in Jordan’s journal. We had a memorial for two soldiers who were killed by an improvised explosive device. None of my soldiers went to the memorial. Their excuse was that they didn’t want to go because it was depressing. I told them it was selfish of them not to pay their respects to two men who were selfless in giving their lives for their country.
Things may not always be easy or pleasant for you, that’s life, but always pay your respects for the way people lived and what they stood for. It’s the honorable thing to do.
When Jordan is old enough to ask how his father died, I will tell him of Charles’s courage and assure him of Charles’s love. And I will try to comfort him with his father’s words.
God blessed me above all I could imagine, Charles wrote in the journal. I have no regrets, serving your country is great.
He tucke