Oral/video histories

[furtech]

A friend posted a neat rememberance about his grandfather. That reminded me to mention oral (and video) histories to everyone: while it's nice to have memories of your parents or grandparents, getting them to sit down and tell those stories in front of a recorder is a forever-thing.

If you have any older relatives (or even not-so-old), grab a tape recorder (doesn't have to be fancy) and interview them-- ask them what life was like, what they did for fun, what they ate...particular moments they remember. Things that made them sad, things they thought were silly. It's priceless stuff that is too often lost forever.

Many of them will defer, telling you that they're too boring to record...but persevere and try. Both of you will be surprised at what comes out. Did your grandparents live through interesting periods? A war, The Great Depression, great events? Were your parents hippies? That kind of stuff is gold.

Studds Terkel made oral histories famous with his "Hard Times: An oral history of the Great Depression". Not everything they say is momentous, but you'll find gems in the rough that make it all worthwhile.

Comments

[fenris-lorsrai.livejournal.com]

If you're intererested in the Holocaust, Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation, has an archive of oral histories online. The entire archive isn't available online yet, but there's selected clips. The archive has around 52,000 video interviews in 32 languages. They eventually want to make them all accessable to as many people as possible.

[crocuta.livejournal.com]

My Grandparents and Great Aunt did that. My Great Aunt actually typed hers out and got it put in book form. My Grandfather was in WWII and had some awesome stories of that era. He had an incredable memory and could remember wonderful details about specific events and, more to my joy, about day to day life in that era(what was popular and how people behaved towards eachother and towards their community). He recorded them and later transcribed them before he died. I assisted my Grandmother trying to help her (long story) but her memory is very bad and I ended up not pushing it because it ended up depressing her that she coudn't have the same insanely detailed memory as my Grandfather.
I would highly suggest at least trying it to anyone and the best benifit isn't the stories but the time you spend with your relatives -doing- it in the first place :)
I treasure that time moreso than the stories themselves which are awesome.

[millencolinf0x.livejournal.com]

That's a really good idea. I remember in school we had a couple of projects that required us to interview family members, and I came across one of these recently. Even though it didn't have anything that others would consider momentous, it was nonetheless very special to me because it tells interesting things about my grandmother and what her life was like growing up. Even though my kids won't get to meet this amazing woman, I'm really glad that they will still get to know a part of her.

[c-eagle.livejournal.com]

I've got quite a few of these now.. thanks for putting that out there as a reminder, bud ^v^