New Article in Boulder Newspaper

Elizabeth Gold at the Boulder County Business Report wrote a wonderful story about Arielle and Family Legacy Productions for their latest edition. We’ll post the photo that goes with the story soon.

Check it out: http://www.bcbr.com/article.asp?id=102982

Veterans History Project

The Library of Congress administers the Veterans History Project to archive materials from veterans who have served in conflicts from WWII to the present Afghanistan and Iraq wars (other war industry workers such as medical volunteers and defense contractors are included). Many of us have U.S. service veterans in our families, and it may be difficult to talk about their service with them if they served in a conflict. Offering to interview them about their service for the Veterans History Project can let them know that you are interested in their service experience and create an opening for them speak about it.

The Project archives many different kinds of materials: letters and artwork from veterans’ time in service and recorded narratives. Online they provide clear guidelines on how to submit to the archive and they have a detailed guide on how to conduct an interview with a veteran and submit the recording. A camcorder or voice recorder is all you need to record your interview–no editing is needed. It’s a great way to open a conversation that can be difficult to begin.

Veterans History Project

Online they have an interview kit, explanatory videos, and interviews with veterans. http://www.loc.gov/vets/

550 Billion Photos

Yesterday, NPR’s “All Things Considered” had a story about companies that scan photos into digital formats. One company president was curious about how many analog photos (printed on paper) are in the U.S., sitting in boxes in basements and attics, and he came up with the figure 550 billion. As the story emphasizes, most photos are not in archival boxes and albums and they are deteriorating.

We have resources on this site if you are interested in tackling your own scanning project, even if it’s 10 photos at a time. For our clients, we scan the photos that will be used in their movies, and if they want we can give them all the digital files of the photos on a hard drive. We also recommend archival products for storing your photos safely, and help our clients make those transfers from the dreaded shoebox. Let us know if you want help or advice about your photo project.

Wiklanski Family Trailer

The Reunion Screening

It’s an odd experience to go to someone else’s family reunion and know just about everyone. Or if not them personally, their name, their parents, grandparents, cousins, aunts, uncles, and maiden name. That was our 4th of July.

Arielle and I, Arielle’s mom Michelle, and my boyfriend Dave went to the Wiklanski’s family reunion. Arielle and I met many of the Wiklanskis last July to begin the process of interviewing them for their family history movies. It was just one year ago that we printed out their family tree and hung all thirteen pages across Arielle’s office wall–making discoveries, listing current residences, children. How were we going to keep everyone’s names straight? Seven Marys, at least five Johns. It was a little overwhelming. A lot of calling and emailing and organizing. A lot of 12 hour+ days for Arielle importing and logging and editing. A lot of–is that Steve or Peter standing next to the car in this photo? In the end, there were 2 trips to Michigan, 44 interviews, 1,500 photos to make 14 family movies.

Northern Michigan was cooler than we expected for July, seventies during the day and fifties at night. The morning of the screening, the Wiklanskis came to the auditorium of the Crooked Tree Arts Center. It was a church once; the stained-glass windows let in a soft, colored light. It was a perfect place for the screening, half-holy, half-civil.

Once everyone was seated, Mark Balasa, who initiated, guided, and underwrote the whole process, spoke about how the process of making the movies had uncovered interesting artifacts, especially the audio interviews his cousin Becky Snyder had made of their aunts and uncles in the 1980s. For many of them it was the only extant record of their voice. He listened to the recordings recently and he told a story of hearing one of his aunts talking about working in a certain factory in Chicago. Soon after listening to her interview he was meeting with a client whose father happened to own that factory and made the connection. He wondered what other connections would be discovered.

Becky spoke next, and encouraged all the kids to watch for scenes in the movie that they would like to re-enact at the reunion. (She had brought a closetful of clothes that she and her cousins used for reunion skits when they were kids). Arielle took the stage and spoke about the gratitude she felt for how welcoming everyone had been in the last year and the closeness she felt with the whole family.

The movie was great. Watching it with the Wiklanskis I felt a jittery electricity that I had not felt watching it before. Everyone laughed, sometimes at moments we didn’t anticipate–we didn’t know that “dishrag” in Polish would be so funny. There were some tears, too. I cried even though I had watched the movie several times before. At the credits there was applause. The Wiklanskis had watched their movie–the history that they gave to us shaped by Arielle into something contemplative and moving handed back to them.

The reunion was a dream. Blue skies and fluffy clouds, rolling hills. There was a ton of food, more desserts than everyone could eat even with third and fourth helpings. Kids played on the playground. Men gathered around the keg. Bocce and softball and bags. A relative who lived in the area showed up with a horse and let anyone ride. Uncle Fred, “Cookie,” came with his tractor and a trailer full of hay to pull the kids. A lot of cousins caught up. Inside the hall small groups of families gathered to watch the 13 short films about their parent, their aunt, their uncle, their grandmother.

Later that night, sitting in the rental car on a hill overlooking Little Traverse Bay, the four us again, we watched two groups of fireworks: a couple blocks away in Petoskey and five miles across the bay in Harbor Springs. Too chilled to want to leave the car and join the crowd at the shore, we sat in the car. The Petoskey fireworks finished, and then the tiny ones in Harbor Springs, the delayed puh-puh-puh-puh, puh-puh coming to us after the smoke drifted from the finale. We joked about being a long-lost distant branch of the Wiklanskis, on our pilgrimmage to Petoskey.

Argentina & The Healing Power of Story

As many of you know, my husband Nico and I spent the month of April in his native country Argentina. We had the intention of making the trip half work/half play—he promoting his new book and me working on a family history movie of his family. I had many reasons I wanted to do this, mostly so that I wouldn’t regret not having done it one day. But also because, as in all families, there are few left in the oldest generation and last year my mother-in-law lost a beloved uncle of hers who was a well-known and important priest in their city. The priest also had an incredible memory and knew more about their family history than anyone else. For him, it’s too late. I like to think that we will all live forever and sometimes wait a little too long. It’s a part of what motivates me to do what I do, helping make sure that we do live forever, at least in some form.

In Argentina it’s very hard to plan anything until you’re there in person. We spent the first week in Buenos Aires reconnecting with friends and eating the world’s best pizza and ice cream. (And I got to interview one person for a documentary project I’ve been working on since 9/11.) Arriving in Gualeguaychu, my husband’s hometown, was a great homecoming. The tears, the love, the food, the laughter, everyone talking over each other, all at once, people asking questions but not waiting for the response to tell you how glad they are to see you. It was glorious!

I prepped my in-laws a bit about the interview process for their family history movie, but, as is my style, I told them not to prepare anything or think too much about it. Going in I knew that my mother-in-law came from a family of 13 (I know what you’re thinking, 13 kids from one mother!) but during the interviews I realized there were two marriages: her father was widowed with 6 children, her mother had a son, and after they married, they had 6 more. I have to say this didn’t really sink in until several interviews and even now as I write this I have to use my fingers to count them all.

With my in-laws in Argentina they were just so excited to begin the project. I decide that it would be a good idea to make a list of my mother-in-law’s siblings that are available to interview. That’s when it happened. Through a quick flurry of back and forths, I found myself swept out the door with my husband and around the corner to ring the bell to his aunt and uncle’s home. Now, I have to preface this story with the fact that this was my third trip to Gualeguaychu. I have spent a total of three months there and I had met many of Nico’s relatives, neighbors, friends, and teachers. I never knew that he had an aunt and uncle who lived around the corner. They live right next door to neighbors who run the corner store that we always run to when we need something quick. I had no idea that Nico had any family that lived anywhere nearby. I was always told that the relatives all lived in another neighborhood and that my in-laws were more or less alone where they lived, sharpening their pain of all three of their sons living abroad.

Nico’s aunt and uncle Amalia and Abel answered the door with broad grins, effusive greetings, and in the great tradition of Argentine hospitality offerings of food and drink. Perplexed by what they could offer us, these strange vegetarian guests, they decided upon this incredibly delicious hard cheese that Abel was curing in what they later showed us, a huge storage room just for food. Their house was well-kept, lovely, and they were warm and kind. We spent an hour getting to know each other and catching up, talking of their world travels, their children, grandchildren.  Amalia invited me to attend a yoga class with her and we set up an interview for the following Tuesday.

Leaving their house with hugs and kisses, I couldn’t believe that these warm and loving people lived so close to my warm and loving in-laws and yet they had no contact. So in my subtle and gentle way, I began to do what I do best—ask questions. Not judgmental or pressing questions, simple ones. Well, why don’t you talk to each other? What happened? What was it like when you were kids? I still don’t fully understand how the rift happened, but it sounds like pure miscommunication and bad timing. We may never know, but this story is about the small miracle that happened after and the greatest healing that I have witnessed in any family I have worked with.

As a consequence of our having visited Amalia and Abel to set up a time for me to interview Amalia, Nico reconnected with their two sons Gustavo and Ariel (so funny that after nearly 30 years I suddenly have a cousin who shares my name). We made plans to dine with them the following week. Nico was happy to be getting to know them after almost 20 years of very little contact.

Nico’s homecoming was exciting for other reasons as well. He was interviewed on national radio, a talk show on the local television station, and the Cultural Center hosted a presentation of his book.  He got to speak to a room filled to the gills.   Amalia, Abel and his cousins all came.  Caught up in the moment, I didn’t see it happen, but afterwards my mother-in-law bubbled to me that Amalia and Abel had come up to her and her husband and kissed them on the cheek and congratulated them. This was a major breakthrough.

Now, I don’t do this work because I want to heal families. (Well, maybe I do.) But I know that that is not always possible and sometimes not even necessary. I have been blessed to actually get to know a number of families that actually function happily or at least appear to. But I do know that whenever I do this work healing happens. There’s something about talking about the past and reexamining it, just reliving it through story-telling, that triggers transformation. This is what happened. I felt love pour out from all the family members I got to meet, including several great-aunts. It’s not about the information, it’s about the process of telling stories. The action. The act. The whole family relating back to itself like a thousand mirrors in time.

Amalia and Abel didn’t turn up at my in-laws doorstep and apologize for 20 years of silence. There may never be an apology from either side. They may never break bread together, but they now wave when they see each other drive by. The silence has been broken and the gates of communication have been reopened. Amalia and Abel’s son Gustavo and his wife and kids ate dinner one night at my in-laws while we were there. Perhaps next year when we visit, we can bridge that chasm and all eat together.

The power of asking a family to sit for a few hours individually and reminisce, recollect, and reveal is indescribable until you experience it for yourself. I have witnessed old men weeping over their mothers, siblings finally voicing the admiration and awe they have for each other, women owning the importance of their life’s work as a mother. I once again feel incredibly blessed that I have been called to this work—that I get to help families reconnect.

On another note, I know that my nephews living their digitally-enhanced childhoods in the U.S. will be shocked to learn how their grandparents grew up without a telephone.

Preserving Your Photos, Part 2

This is the second installment in our series on organizing and storing photographs. The last post gave advice for dealing with photographs that are housed in non-archival albums. In this post, I’ll lay out various options for sustainably storing and displaying photographs that are not currently in albums.

The first consideration in deciding how to store your photographs is that they should be placed in archival housing that is acid-free and that will protect your photos from temperature and humidity fluctuations and other environment damage. Next, consider how the photographs will be used and how much time you want to spend organizing them for display and storage.

If you choose the minimalist route, store your photos in an archival photo box (about the size of a shoe box). If the photos are in the developer’s envelop take them out (that paper may not be acid-free) and keep the negatives. To be extra safe, store the photos and negatives in separate places; you can store the negatives in archival plastic sheets in a separate binder.

Once you have the photos organized, they need to be labeled. The longest lasting and non-damaging way to label photos is by writing on the back of each one with a no. 2 pencil with a softened point. Unlike ink, pencil will not fade or bleed through. Make sure not to press too hard or else you’ll leave an imprint. You should label each photo with the names of the persons in the photo, location and date as much as possible. Use a fine-tip permanent marker to write on the plastic sheeting holding the negatives or include a slip of paper with a description of the group of photos with the negatives.

In addition to labeling each photo, you can create a hard copy with a list of the photo descriptions. This could be stored on your computer and printed out with the negatives. You could also create a simple numbering system to match the hard copy of the descriptions with the photos and their negatives. It might seem like a lot of work, but it is the most thorough of the simple ways to archive photographs.

For photographs that you want to place in albums, you can choose to put them in a binder with acid-free plastic sheets. It’s a safe and very easy way to store photographs you want to be able to look at without comprising their preservation.

You could consider the first option a prelude to the second: first organize the photos by labeling and placing them in a photo box, and as you go if you see photos that you would like to display you can mark them to pull out later (make a note in your list of photographs, “in album”).

If you would like to spend more time on the display of the photos, you can use more elaborate housing: acid-free paper pages and photo corner to hold the photos in place. These pages allow room on the album pages to include separate printed or hand-written labels alongside the photographs. Make sure that the album pages and binder are all archival, and especially avoid the sticky-backed photo albums.

If you follow this process you can be quite choosy about which photos you want to display. There is no reason for every photo to be displayed in an album, especially blurry and unattractive photos. Sometimes a photo is significant even if isn’t the best shot, but you can be the judge of which and how many photos you want to display and which can be stored safely in the photo boxes. If there are photos that you really would rather not even store, you don’t have to meticulously go through the archiving process; you are allowed to throw them away.

Preserving Your Photos, Part 1

This is the first installment in a multi-part series on storing photographs. People intend to treat their photos well yet many photographs end up in some bad environments. Even when organized, photo albums are often the culprit, placing photos in contact with plastic sheets that break down and release photo-destroying chemicals, sticky sheets that permanently glue and warp photos with heat and humidity changes. Even nicer photo albums with glassine sheets between the pages can break down photos.

The good news is that museum-quality archival products are now available for the same amount of money you could spend on non-archival storage boxes and albums. Archival Products, archival.com, makes boxes, binders, folders, and albums, for every kind of photo, newspaper clipping, diploma, pamphlet you have. Their products are used by the Library of Congress, museums, and other institutions that maintain permanent archives. But, before you decide which archival products you may need, you will need to consider what you want to save in order to figure out how you should do it.

For example, consider a photo album that your grandmother put together. The pages are falling out of the binding and it is too fragile to handle without damaging it further, but when you open it you see her hand-written notes and labels on the page next to the photographs. She placed the photos in a certain way and knowing that imbues it with an order and meaning beyond the photographs alone.  How you want to preserve the order and care that your grandmother put into the album, along with the photographs, will guide your decision on how to store it.

If you decide that you want the photographs to be as accessible as possible, and you accept  some  loss from the original album, then you can carefully remove the pages from the album, and the photos from the pages,  and place the photos in an archival binder in polypropylene sheets to protect the photos in an acid-free environment to allow them to be viewed without causing harm for generations. In this new housing, you can still preserve the order and labeling of the original album, but it will lose some qualities of  the original.

If you believe that the integrity of the album is too important to disturb you may want to digitally scan the album (being careful not to cause more damage–see our post on scanning photos), or if it is too fragile to scan, take photographs of each page. Even as the album degrades further you will have a digital record. You can also slow the rate of deterioration by placing the entire album in archival housing, essentially an acid-free box, and Archival Products offers several different options. While the pages of the photo album are still acidic, the box will protect the album from environmental damage–moisture, temperature fluctuations.

Let the meaning of the album and your intended use of it guide you in choosing the best method of storage for your photographs.

Our next installement will consider photos stored in a less organized fashion.

Tips for Scanning

We know that many of you will be taking photos this holiday and receiving many in the mail, so we thought now would be a good time to offer some tips on scanning photos to store in your computer to preserve, and make CDs, scrapbooks, and slideshows.

No matter what scanner you own (Epson, HP, Canon), it should have come with software. (If you are planning to import your files into a program like iphoto (Mac users) or Picasa (PC users) you do not need to worry about the image being perfectly straight because you can straighten them later in these programs). Programs such as Photoshop, Photoshop Elements, iphoto, and Picasa allow users to correct and improve their imported images and documents. For beginners, iphoto and Picasa offer simple adjustments that are easy to navigate. (If you need photo software, Picasa is a free photo program made by google, download at http://picasa.google.com/.)

We use Epson Perfection scanners that are simple and straightforward. All that is necessary to make them work is to place your pictures on the glass plate (face down–like a copy machine), press the scan button, and follow the on-screen prompts. In some cases you may need to locate the software on your computer and open the application in order to import the files from your scanner to your computer.

Here are some step-by step tips for easy, efficient scanning with beautiful results:

• Make sure that your scanner is plugged in and connected to your computer (usually by a USB cord).

• Make sure the glass surface of your scanner is clean (i.e. no big flecks of dirt or dust).

• Place the photo or document you wish to scan face down on the scanner.

TIME SAVING TIP: If you know you will be scanning multiple photos, place as many as will fit onto the scanner and separate them out later once you have imported them into your computer.

• Press the “scan” button on your scanner.

There are usually several buttons on a scanner. For instance, one might give you the option to make a copy, another to email an image to someone, and a third is often for a simple scan. These are all useful options–for our purposes, press the one that says or displays “scan.”

• Follow onscreen instructions. You will be prompted to configure your settings.

Most scanning software will offer different modes (i.e. Auto Mode, Home, Professional). In general, if all you want to do is scan, choose the fully-automized option. With this option, the computer will identify what sort of document you are attempting to scan by scanning a preview. The instructions will then prompt you to enter a location to save the file before completing the scan.

• It is important to choose a location you will remember, such as a folder designated for scanned files, or a photo folder.

Once the photos are scanned you can make adjustments: crop, straighten, take out red-eye, re-touch to take our scratches or dust. Many basic photo programs, such as iphoto and Picasa, will allow you to manipulate the photos to change the lighting, color tone, and convert to black and white with very straightforward tools.

Now your photos are stored on your computer, and you can create CDs, slideshows, or print them later at home or give the files to a photo developer. Ta da!

Today is the National Day of Listening

Storycorps, a nonprofit that helps families and friends interview each other and record their conversations about important moments in their lives, has designated today, November 28, 2008, as the first annual National Day of Listening. The idea is to encourage us to focus on the people in our lives by setting aside one hour to interview a person who is important to us. Please check out their website; they offer great advice and a helpful do-it-yourself guide.  It’s the best gift we can give our loved ones, our attention.

http://www.nationaldayoflistening.org/

Welcome to Family Legacy Productions new blog!

Kelly Connolly, Associate Produce at Family Legacy Productions & Arielle Nobile, Founder/Director of Family Legacy Productions hard at work

We promise to give you regular updates on upcoming workshops, screenings, how-tos, current projects, and great stories we encounter.  Please check back regularly and tell your friends!

If you just stumbled upon this blog and want to know more about who we are, please visit our website, www.familylegacypro.com.

Thanks!

Arielle Nobile proudly displays the Family Legacy Logo

Holidays

With Thanksgiving upon us and the rest of the holidays just around the corner, many of us will be getting the chance to visit with family that we don’t see all that often.  It’s a great time to sit down and go through unidentified family photos, decide to start a documentary project, or just ask questions of relatives that you may have on your mind.  We’ll be posting some useful tips to how to go about starting your own family history project during this holiday season starting this week.  So look out for it!

5 Ways to Make Family History during the Holidays

Arielle offers tips for working on family history during the holidays. “It’s cold outside and it’s fun to go through family photos and reminisce while family members are all together. You will be amazed at how much you can accomplish when you are all in one place.”

1. Pool family photos and label them. Use an archival pen that will not bleed through to write on the back. Start with the older photos-photos left unmarked might not be identifiable in a couple generations. After the first of the year, computer-savvy family members can scan photos to make CDs, slideshows and scrapbooks.

2. Have a movie night to watch your home movies together. People are often surprised to see what they had in storage. Maybe your aunt Jean has that video of your 6^th birthday party. If there are home movies that you want to preserve you can send them to a video company to digitally transfer for long-term storage.

3. Jot down notes on your family’s stories while you are spending time with them. You can use the notes to remember the stories you want to hear from your parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles to interview them with a voice recorder or camcorder at another, quieter time.

4. Gather family facts. Buy a simple family tree book, or bring a blank notebook and make columns for birth dates, locations, wedding and graduation dates. Have older relatives write down their parents’ and grandparents’ important dates as much as they remember. Maybe your great-grandparents are from Alabama and you thought they were from New Jersey. You can use this as a foundation for genealogy research later.

5. Bring a voice recorder or camcorder and record the reminiscing. Even if the scene is chaotic you will capture some moments that your family will treasure.

“Use your time together during the holidays to listen to your family’s stories. When you go through photos and home movies you will be making sure that your family stories will be passed on to the next generation,” Arielle says.