This article is about adding context to your life stories using archival newspapers.
First though, it’s important to acknowledge the process of writing in general, of writing our life stories or those of our families. In various conversations I have heard people say, "who would be interested in my life story?" As my friend Jay Speyerer of Legacy Road Communications said, "you are interesting now, but you will be fascinating 50 years from now!" Someone else whose writing has inspired me is Anne Lamott who became famous with her New York Times best selling book Operating Instructions: The diary of my son’s first year. I took writing classes from Annie Lamott before she became so famous and now you can hardly get into them. She is irreverent and hilarious. She also is very truthful and that’s what makes her so funny.
She wrote a book called Bird by Bird. The title came from a time when her brother, who was 10 was trying to get a report on birds written that he’d had 3 months to write. It was due the next day. He was at the kitchen table and he had binder paper and pens and pencils and unopened books on birds around him and he was immobilized by the hugeness of the task ahead and nearly in tears. Their father, a writer, sat down beside him and put his arm around her brother’s shoulder. He said, "Bird by bird buddy, just take it bird by bird."
And that’s how we need to take our life story writing, bird by bird.
Annie Lamott says that writing is about telling the truth. We are a species that needs and wants to understand who we are. And her students will say to her, but I don’t know where to start?
Well, she tells them, you might start by writing down every single thing that you can remember from your first few years in school starting with kindergarten. Move on to first grade and don’t worry if what you write down is no good because no one will see it.
Turn your mind to holidays, Christmas, Easter, Seder or whatever, and every relative that was there. Write about what people ate and what they wore and how your uncles used to hold up their dress socks with garters. Describe a gift you received at Christmas and how it made you feel inside. Remember that you own what happened to you.
Try to sit down at the same time every day. Clear a space and squint at an image that is taking shape in your mind. You will hear voices of anxiety and judgment, doom and guilt. Also severe hypochondria. There may be a Nurse Ratched-like listing of things that must be done right at this moment. Foods must come out of the freezer, appointments must be canceled, dishes must be done, laundry must be folded. But hold an imaginary gun to your head and keep writing.
Annie Lamott’s book Bird by Bird can inspire you with humor and keep you going when you think you might be crazy.
And when we move into those stories from our life and the lives of our family members, maybe we need some help jogging our memory. The real food for life stories is in the details! Maybe we want to add some context to the story. We want to absorb a sense of the time in which these people lived. We want to breathe in the words, the way of speaking, the turn of the phrases of the time. Or we want to remember more vividly a time in our own life about which we want to write.
One way to do this is to take a look at archival newspapers for a glance into history. When I browse around the history book that is an archived newspaper, I can see even through the advertising, what the times were like.
For example, when I think of my grandmother born in 1899, I recall her telling me she would rather take the elevator than the escalator. She didn't like the idea of a moving staircase and was afraid she would get her shoe stuck in it.
So, I looked up the escalator in newspaperarchive.com and sure enough, there were lots of stories at the turn of the century about this new device for transporting large numbers of people.
The New York Times in November of 1900 reported that, "A new and improved style of moving stairway or escalator, as it is called, was put in operation yesterday by the Manhattan Elevated Railway at its up-town station of the Sixth Avenue line at Twenty third Street. There are thirty-two steps constantly moving upward at a rate of seventy-two feet a minute, which will carry about 4,000 persons an hour. The speed will later be increased to ninety feet a minute. At the top. and bottom the steps assume the shape of a moving platform.' At the top the steps fold together. At. the bottom the platform breaks into steps, and it is therefore necessary to choose one's " stance," as the golfers say, to avoid standing on the crack where the breaks occur. Women were timid yesterday about using the new stairway. Two young girls had been urging one another to try it when a young man stepped up behind them, and, giving one of them a slight push, shoved her on the moving platform, which immediately carried her on and up."
"Well," I thought, "that would have been my grandmother in Milwaukee in about 1910 when she would have been around 11 years old." When I was a child, my grandmother would take me shopping and it was a treat because we went on the streetcar and over to the department store and she bought me an outfit. But we always took the elevator between floors!
And an advertisement by Macy’s in the New York Times, in November of 1900 was headlined, "An Explanation for the Little Ones." It said, "We intended to have the greatest moving Panorama in the history of our store this Christmas. It was ordered in ample time and is now completed, but the delay and many details of opening the new store made it impossible for us to exhibit it now. You shall enjoy it next year. In lieu of that attraction you are invited to come and enjoy the treasures of the Toy Department, which may be quickly reached by stepping on the escalator."
The Winnipeg Free Press from Manitoba Canada, in June of 1903, reported that "This is by no means a new device. The escalator has, for over two years, been demonstrating its fitness for conveying large numbers of people from one level to another with rapidity and safety. The first escalator in public service was installed in the Textile building at the Paris Exposition of 1900 where it called forth favorable comment from visitors of every nation and from the technical press of Europe."
Another invention coming into use around the turn of the century was the telephone. Here is a excerpt from the Moberly Daily Monitor from Moberly Missouri from October of 1903 titled, "What The Telephone Reveals" The article says,
"The telephone reveals one's disposition. It exposes amiability or the opposite traits in a way that leaves one no chance to recover the lost reputation. Persons who suddenly try to make their voices soft with amiability when they have learned who is speaking never deceive the hearer at the other end of the line. It is the first answer that reveals the person. One reason for this attitude of mind on the part of the person called is the interruption at the other work. It often happens that he or she may be absorbed in something else. The first tendency is, of course, to answer gruffly the person who does intrude at such a juncture. Only persons who take the trouble to think of others will make an effort to be polite when they feel in quite another mood. Thus is the telephone at the outset a test of manners. The telephone voice may also express one's physical condition as that is indicated by the nerves. Only a few months ago a man who had been for years extremely occupied by his affairs and devoted only to them suddenly broke down, turned out to be a physical wreck, and had to retire from all that remained to him of life. Most of his friends were astonished at his sudden breakdown,"I knew that he was in a serious- condition long before he ever consulted me," his physician said, "And I discovered his condition from his manner of talking over the telephone. No man who answered in that irritated, peevish fashion could possibly have been in good health. That voice showed exhausted nervous physique. So I am not surprised to hear that he has succumbed entirely to overwork." Thus the telephone is a measure of disposition, manners and health."
And now we have our cell phones. What would these people think of cell phones? How many people are left that were born around the turn of the century?
Also at the turn of the century, the automobile was making its appearance.
Of course, we so take cars for granted now. As the price of gasoline continues to rise, perhaps we’ll consider going back to the times when people didn’t go so far so quickly and without even thinking about it.
Of course, we won’t go back to horses for transportation, probably. But we may be exploring more alternatives and debating them.
Here was a debate that took place in Las Cruces, New Mexico in November of 1899. The Rio Grande Republican said, "Isidore Armijo organized a debating society for the winter months. The next meeting will be on Sunday evening at 7:30. The subject: Resolved that the automobile will do away with the usefulness of the horse. Jose Gonzales and Dolores Marufo will speak in the negative and Isidoro Armijo and Jose Lucero in the affirmative."
I guess when I think about it, as to my own life story and looking at it in relation to that of my grandmother, there was quite a bit going on as she was growing up. There were many new inventions, many new mechanical ways of doing things that hadn’t been there before her time.
Likewise, in my time the internet was born and cell phones and many electronic devices that hadn’t been invented before my time, even the transistor radio. I remember my first one, with a baby blue leather case. I treasured it and took it to bed with me hoping to hear the Beatles songs as I fell asleep.
I also remember the family getting together at my grandmother’s home to watch Neil Armstrong take the first steps on the moon. "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind," he said. That was July 21, 1969. Richard Nixon was the president.
The Albuquerque Tribune on that day said, "Armstrong, comparing the view of the moon to the California desert, said: "It has a stark beauty all its own. "Aldrin added: "A beautiful view, magnificent desolation."
Moving on to another historical event from the 60’s, I remember standing in the living room glued to the black-and-white console TV and seeing Jack Ruby shoot Lee Harvey Oswald. It happened right there, right on that black and white TV screen in front of all of America. It was November 24, 1963 and I was 12 years old. And what about the motorcade and John-John Kennedy giving that salute at the gravesite and Jackie Kennedy in her veil holding Carolyn's hand.
I was in Catholic grade school at the time and when the news came about the assassination, we all went into the church to pray. I had a hard time on the kneelers because I had just torn up my knees falling off my new blue Schwinn bike.
In our writing we can look back at the past for our stories and we can also look to the current time as well. It’s also important to keep writing about what is happening now. And writing about your own thoughts and feelings about politics and current events and recording the conversations and details of your own daily living.
My church recently went through a process to become "green." The goal was using all recycled products from copy paper to plates. This means we'll be doing more dishes, of course.
What will people 50 years from now say about our interest in the environment? What will have occurred by then? How will people be living? Will everyone have electric cars and solar panels?
All the stories are in the details!
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