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Close Encounters of the Animal Kind

June 8, 2009 By martha_jewett 1 Comment

When it comes to close encounters of the animal kind, you don’t have to be Captain “Sully” Sullenberger to have had one. Our friend Frank was accosted by a swan which didn’t leave him alone until he punched it in the beak. I’ve had two deer encounters, both of which were close calls. In the first, if I had been a foot ahead of where I was walking, the buck would have landed on me and might have killed me. In the second, a deer came out of nowhere one warm November night and struck my car, smashing my driver’s-side mirror, door, and window. At first, all I saw was a dark shape. I thought I had killed someone. If it had landed on my windshield, I might have lost control of the car.  Close calls that turned out well. But what if?

What close encounters of the animal kind have you had? Were they funny? Scary? Why not write a memoir about it?

Let me know how it goes.

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A Virtual Walk Home from School

June 8, 2009 By martha_jewett Leave a Comment

The other day, I walked home from my elementary school. Virtually. Using Google Street View.

I went to Google Maps and entered the school address.

I clicked on the Red Balloon on the map, the symbol for the look-up address. A box appeared including a link to Street View. (Street View isn’t always available.) I clicked on Street View and a street-view photo of the school appeared. I felt like I was standing looking at the school. In the photo, a compass appears in the upper left-hand corner which allows you to see a 360-degree view. You can turn around and get your bearings by clicking on the compass–to orient yourself and figure out which way to go. Street names appear in white in the middle of the street, along with arrows indicating the direction you are facing on the street. When I clicked on the arrows, it was as though I was walking down the street.

Then I started walking home.

I went to the side of the school to the street I walked home virtually. From there, I clicked the arrows all the way home.

You don’t have to rely on your memory with so much information available. That makes memoir writing much easier.

Here are ways to use Google Street View when you are writing a memoir:

1. To refresh your memory about your neighborhood used to look like.  

2. To see what the neighborhood looks like now. How much has it changed? How much is it the same?

3. To get the look and feel of walking around (a great memory trigger).

4. To compare your adult memory against your childhood memories. How has your perspective changed?

5. To see the street signs and street names again. What associations do they bring up?

What have you found that you never believed you’d be able to find? Drop me a line.

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The Person Behind the Photo

June 1, 2009 By martha_jewett Leave a Comment

Yesterday, we visited the Jewish Community Center of MetroWest in Whippany, New Jersey, to see “Family by Family,”  an exhibit of multi-generational family portraits of Jewish families from Newark, New Jersey. I was sorry there was no docent-led tour. Without it, the people in the photos didn’t come to life. We were just looking at family albums of people we don’t know.

I wonder how many family portraits amount to just that: photos of people you don’t know. Without first-hand descriptions, there’s no way to know the people in the photos. What did their laughs sound like? What did their kitchens smell like? How did they do their hair?

jcc-photo-of-photos

My great-grandmother Belle Gott (b 1875 d 1956) wrote the briefest of memoirs about her parents. ”My Folks and I” is only three pages long. But I know my great-great grandparents because Belle describes them in physical terms. Of her father she says,  ”It was always a joy to hear my father’s rich deep voice, to catch the sound of his whistled tune as he returned from work. I believe it is a happy man who comes home whistling.” Of her mother she says: ”Her eyes were that perfect blue to complement her spouse’s dark ones. She was fair, with brown wavy hair, but she lacked the strong teeth, such as father had. She had much dental trouble and finally resigned herself to a toothless old age, and matched it with a halo of silvery wavy, bobbed hair.” Belle says they both sang and hummed as they worked, something I do all the time.  “You get your singing from them,” says my husband.

Want an easy way to write a memoir? Pick a photo of an important person in your life and describe him or her using your five senses (see, hear feel, taste, smell). You’ll bring the person to life in a way the photo never can. Here are some questions to ask:

1. What color hair? What color eyes? Tall? Short? Stocky? Thin?

2. What did these look like: Feet? Hands? Walk? Stance?

3. What did this person sound like: Voice? Intonation? Accent?

4. Characteristic speech? Favorite words or expressions?

5. Views? Attitudes? Contradictions?

Let me know how this memoir tip works for you.

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Remembrance of Memorial Days Past

May 24, 2009 By martha_jewett 1 Comment

Memoir opens a window to a different life.

In starting my research for a new family memoir about my great-great-great aunt, Mary Jewett Telford, I learned how flowers were used to commemorate Memorial Day over one-hundred years ago.

I’ve been reading through the “red book” (i.e., rule book) of an organization Mary Jewett Telford founded as a charter member and national corresponding secretary: the Woman’s Relief Corps (WRC). The WRC was formed in 1883 to assist the Grand Army of the Republic (GAR), a huge post-Civil War organization of Union veterans. Before the inception of the federal Veterans Administration, the WRC raised money for veterans relief, through entertainment, services, and membership dues. The Relief Committees of the local WRC “corps” (i.e., local chapters) buried veterans, supported homes for Civil War orphans, visited the sick, and helped satisfy the ”temporal wants” of veterans, widows, and orphans.

How did they use flowers on Memorial Day? They placed them in large bodies of water. In 1903, the Corps decided “That Corps adjacent to large streams or bodies of water strew floral tributes on the waters on Memorial Day in memory of our sailor-soldier dead, providing that it does not seriously conflict with ceremonies of other patriotic organizations” (The Woman’s Relief Corps Red Book Containing the Rules and Reulations of the Woman’s Relief Corps, Auxiliary to the Grand Army of the Republic, Adopted by Twenty-third National Convention, Denver, Colorado, 1905, Revised Edition, May 1914, page 155).

Mary Jewett Telford (1839-1906) received a Civil War pension for her service as the sole nurse in a Nashville hospital of over 1,000 wounded Union soldiers. She and her husband, Jacob Telford, adopted three girls who were Civil War orphans. She went on to be a church and temperance worker and was active in the Colorado woman’s suffrage movement.

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Memorial Day Memoir

May 23, 2009 By martha_jewett 1 Comment

Lt. Wallace Jewett, 16th Michigan, killed July 2, 1863, Gettysburg PA

This Memorial Day, I’d like to honor Wallace E. Jewett, my first cousin four times removed (meaning four generations ago), who died in the Battle of Gettysburg in the Civil War.Wallace was 21 when he enlisted in Saginaw City, Michigan, on October 7, 1861, with the rank of 1st Sergeant.  He was a brave, capable soldier and was promoted often:

  • July 1, 1862—Sergt. Major
  • July 29, 1862—2nd Lieut. (As of Co. K)
  • February 2, 1863—1st Lieut. (As of Co. K)
  • April 1, 1863—Actg. Aide-de-Camp (As of 3rd Brigade, 1st Div, 5th Corp)

On July 2, 1863, Wallace died on Little Round Top. Little Round Top was at the extreme left side of the 3-mile-long Union line. Lieut. Wallace’s regiment, the 16th Michigan, “was at the right at the front edge of the rocks and was much more exposed than other parts of the line.” (Col. James C. Rice, July 31, 1863.) 

The fighting started at 4 pm on July 2, 1863. For the next hour, the Confederate forces charged again and again. “At every charge, he was repulsed with terrible slaughter,” wrote Col. James C. Rice (July 31, 1863). “Despairing of success at this point, he made a desperate attack upon the extreme right of the brigade” [where the 16th Michigan was], “forcing back a part of the Sixteenth Michigan. This regiment was broken, and through some misunderstanding of orders, explained in the official report of the commanding officer, it was thrown into confusion; but being immediately supported by the 140th NY Volunteers, the line became again firm and unbroken.” (Col. James C. Rice, July 31, 1863.) “The enemy again and again attacked the center with great vigor, and the extreme left with desperation. Passing one brigade of his forces by the right flank in three columns, he pushed through the ravine toward the left of our brigade, came immediately to a ‘front,’ and charged upon the Twentieth Maine. Now occurred the most critical time of the action. For about a half an hour the struggle was desperate.” (Col. James C. Rice, July 31, 1863.)

Somewhere during this time, Wallace E. Jewett was shot.  Benjamin F. Partridge, a Captain in the 16th Michigan at Little Round Top, wrote after the Civil War, “Lieut. Wallace Jewett of Co. ‘K’ was killed by a ball through his head just over his right eye, while cheering his comrades and men with uplifted sword.” (The Bachelder Papers, Vol. I, page 244.)

Wallace E. Jewett, was buried on July 3, 1863. He is memorialized in the National Cemetery at Gettysburg. You can easily find Wallace’s gravestone–Lieut. W. Jewett. Co. K. Regt. 16.–(MI plot H-2), by walking along the Michigan row of graves there.

 Wallace E. Jewett was 23.

This Memorial Day, why don’t you write and share a memoir about someone who gave his or her life?

Photo courtesy of Clay Feeter, my cousin and Civil War historian extraordinaire, who provided the research.

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Paradise Lost?

May 21, 2009 By martha_jewett Leave a Comment

Check out the May 2009 issue of Good Housekeeping. In “Teach a Girl, Change the World,” Judith Stone writes about Three Cups of Tea, the #1 New York Times bestselling memoir by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin. Three Cups of Tea is the story of how Mortenson has built schools for girls in Pakistan. Three Cups of Tea has sold more than two million copies and has been on the Publishers Weekly trade paperback bestseller list for more than 84 weeks.

On January 23, 2009, Greg Mortenson and his 12-year old daughter, Amira, spoke in my town—Montville, New Jersey—at the Robert R. Lazar Middle School. In “Mortenson Shares His Message” in Neighbor News, Lisa Kintish reports that Mortenson asked the middle school kids how many of them had talked to their grandparents about The Depression, World War II, Vietnam, and the Civil Rights Movement. It’s usually only 10%. Our kids fared better (15%). But in Pakistan and Afghanistan, 90% of the kids raise their hands. The elders go to the schools and share their stories. “It’s a tragedy in our great country that we lost that,” says Mortenson.

Everyone’s stories are a treasure. Have you shared one today?

 

http://www.goodhousekeeping.com/family/real/education-for-girls?click=main_sr

http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA6656909.html

http://www.theneighbornews.com/NC/0/2271.html

http://www.montville.net/lazar/mediacenter/

Look for Mortenson’s follow-up book, Promoting Peace with Books, not Bombs, in December 2009.

Photo credit: www.robturner.co.uk

 

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The Why of Memoir Writing

April 7, 2009 By martha_jewett 1 Comment

Why write a memoir? I’ve asked many people who have written one or tried to write one.  Here are a few of their answers:

“I want them to know ‘the real me,’ to know I had an interesting, adventuresome life.”

“To understand my life by looking backward.”

“To write something for myself.”

“I want to talk about all the fun we had.”

“I want to get something on paper.”

“I grew up in a Ukrainian/Russian neighborhood in Rochester, New York, which no longer exists. I wanted my kids and grandkids to know what that life was like.”

“To inspire other immigrants to come out of their difficulties.”

“To capture the stories, but not in a lot of depth.”

“To write the story of my grandfather’s tragic death.”

That last answer was mine. Now it’s your turn. Why do you want to write a memoir?

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