A couple posts ago, I mentioned how excited I was and how much anticipation I was feeling about a workshop I was to attend. Well the workshop has happened and I am still glowing from the energy and hope I drew from the experience beyond the sheer pleasure that being at the conference, in the moment, brought to me.
The workshop was entitled, “Our Lives as Sacred Stories.” And, “Oh, Lordy, Lordy, it was wonderful,” as my maternal ancestors used to say.
Carrie Newcomer is a dear friend I have known since before disco-died. In the very late 1970s or extremely early 80s, I heard Carrie perform as a solo act at the Pizza Keg in West Lafayette. I am not sure if she had written “Survivors” as yet, and she probably performed “Black-eyed Susan.” Within a short time she was dating a good friend of my boyfriend, and I was eating veggie dinners of delightful stuffed mushrooms, and wine, at her place, and was marvelling at this woman who soaked soybeans and made her own soy milk and tempeh, and made a run-down upstairs apartment in central Lafayette, Indiana into a beautiful, homey haven from impending Reaganism, and on top of it all she was a singer-songwriter. I was in awe of her. Still am.
I was right there through the entirety of the Stone Soup era. I lived with the sound man. I wrapped a lot of cords. I wrote a thesis about underground networks of midwives attending home-births as she had a home-birth. I marvelled at her strength, and her belief in the path she was making, taking, or following (depending on your own world view) as her solo career began again.
We were both there at the beginning of the ending of some quite significant relationships for both of us. One of images my memory conjures up whenever I hear the word “angels” is of Carrie and I as we sat on a low concrete step connected the sidewalk in front of my student ghetto home. There was a sense of turmoil and sadness around us as we talked. There were some pretty hard times ahead for both of us. I listened as she told me how she saw angels. I did not really understand this nor the verse that she had referenced until I heard the song of hers, Angels Unaware, decades later.
We have rarely seen each other in the intervening decades, but there is still a connection when we meet. Two midwestern girls all grown up, in fact grown to an age where some become wise women (but not us…, nah, we both see ourselves as doing foolish things with some regularity) as we live very different lives across the continent from each other. She is fiercely gentle as she shares her story of love and the connectedness of all things.
One thing I know: “Never get between a Quaker… and her mission.”
So what did we do at the workshop?
She showed us how to write about a kindness received or given. Then, she showed us how to take that glowing feeling we had after writing and take it out into community and grow it larger, this time, into a song. She showed us that when we share this kind of experience and really listen to someone, and connect, it is then good to stop, and say, “and it was holy.”
Carrie is so good at walking the walk. It is like the difference between being lectured at and having someone share a part of her heart with you.
Sacred Stories
This Friday I attend a workshop by Carrie Newcomer called, “Our Lives as Sacred Story + Community Songwriting.” I will report back, of course, as the course is very much in synch with what WLP is about. I’m writing now as there is some trepidation about attending. The person leading the workshop is someone I first met a lifetime ago when we were both young women with lives intertwined with men who we would be with for a while, but would both soon come to know we had to leave behind these men, through whose lives we met, if our lives were to grow toward the light.
I have seen her a few times since then for coffee, a quick meal, a walk in a park or along a stream, or a rare day long visit. She is a rather well know singer and song writer. Me, I am a women that few know who writes and tries to help other women write or capture their stories. For me it is always daunting to see someone who has made her dreams come true with incredibly hard work, tenacity, persistence, and a whole lot of days and nights on the road. It seems like a more difficult path than mine, but as we say these days, “she persisted.” It would be relatively easy to say she is successful and I am not, but inside I know we are all successful in our own way, just as we all have our stories, sacred and tender that we have lived as we walk our path in life.
It is still a bit daunting for me, here I am signed up for the workshop yet I do not write music, or lyrics or songs. Poems, yes. So while I am a bit nervous about tomorrow, I am also very excited. I want to see what women’s wisdom she has accumulated about the topic so I can share it with you.
The sacred, the place in our hearts where our precious aches and joys are felt and remembered, is not an place easily called upon for sharing, let alone easily evoked, yet Carrie writes words wrapped in music that open the hardest lithic hearts. Her music calls out and lifts our better, light-filled, selves.
We all have these selves inside us. Sharing our selves, sharing our sacred stories is a beautiful frame for living our legacies now, telling our stories, giving those stories as beautiful gifts of self whether they are songs, poems, acts of kindness and helping, or times spent with grandchildren at our knees.
You can find her touring schedule and a few recordings and videos on her site at CarrieNewcomer.com.
Seneca Falls, Meet Detroit
Yes. I have high hopes for the Autumn.
There is a gathering in Detroit at the end of October.
I am of course thinking of Seneca Falls, but also of Julia Ward Howe’s words:
In the name of womanhood and of humanity, I earnestly ask that a general congress of women, without limit of nationality, may be appointed and held at some place deemed most convenient, and at the earliest period consistent with its objects…
The Women’s suffrage movement made some poor judgments mid-Nineteenth Century and the along the way through the 20th Century. They addressed class but chose to exclude race from the scope of their concerns. After an inclusive beginning at Seneca Falls in 1848 which Frederick Douglass attended and at which he spoke, and at which abolitionists were well represented, something happened. That something was silence. White privilege is not a new concept. Inherent bias within the ruling class, whites, existed pre- and post- Civil War, and existed on both sides, not just the Confederate side. After the Civil War the North needed to walk the walk at home and in the southern lands and peoples that lost. They did not do this. It was more comfortable for white women to stick with white concerns and less painful for them to avoid the integrative issues, such as economic inequality.
We have started to own up to this history and must continue to do so. It benefits no one to engage in counting wrongs. Wrongs cannot be compared. I may have been raised in poverty and diminished by sexism, but I will not compare my personal history with anyone else’s. I will not pretend I can right the wrongs of the past either. I can acknowledge them. I can try to stop their perpetuation.
I know I am not alone. For almost 5 years a group of Tucson women writers have met once a month to discuss blogging and social media as it relates to business, personal writing, ethics, and legacy. The group is actively engaged in creating a better world. We are meeting the weekend of the Autumnal Equinox to have a retreat/conference. I know of at least a dozen other women’s groups in the area working to similar ends. Such groups and numbers, when combined, across the US and world, can and will change everything.
For 10 years prior to that I was a local, regional, and national level activist in a women’s peace and justice group.
The time is right.
The combining mechanism has been announced. The Women’s March has announced the Women’s Convention at the end of October of this year, 2017.
It is time for the aspirations of Seneca Falls to meet the full spectrum of American women in Detroit.
I will be there, will you?
Women Who Curate and Publish – Part 1
I recently attended a small (200+ attendees) gathering of people who curate and publish via a blogging platform.
Today I am talking about general aspects of writing conferences in light of the existence of blogging. So yes, this was a blogging conference, but it was also a writing conference, but it was not like the writing conferences I once attended. Those 20th Century conferences are now anachronisms in my book. At least most of them anyway.
Writing Conferences were usually formal and stuffy events at which we all hoped to meet and wow the one person who could make my publishing dreams come true.
It did not really take all that long to learn that such conferences are mostly a waste of time in the sessions upon sessions where individual “published” authors shared their secrets of getting published, and that it is damn hard and most often unrewarding work. The pointers were fine, but they seemed to always condense to this:
- Write.
- Network.
- Repeat.
Then in recent years they added:
- Develop social media presence and brand yourself.
Basically there are variations of this model in the “network” segment that might be contact agents, talk to editors, join writers group, and so on.
Online writing and marketing (and, “Yes, marketing yourself and your work is now integral to the writing process.”) are part of every publication process unless you were so successful last century that can hire someone to be your social media person.
I have attended blogging conferences throughout the last ten years. Some are huge, national and international affairs such as BlogHer, and some are smaller and regionally or demographically focused, such as Blended. Nationally-focused small blogging conferences are another beast entirely. I attended the Bloggers at Midlife Conference, aka BAM or #BAMC or #BAMC16, a blogging conference aimed at an age- or stage- separated group of women who are beyond the Mommy Blogger demographic.
By the way, my use of the phrase mommy blogger is not pejorative. Young mothers with children have a need to communicate. Communicating through a blog is as natural today as a telephone conversation was to the mother’s of the 1960s.
There are other contemporary groups that have figured out how to meet communication needs through serial online publishing, which is how most blogs (web logs) are best described. Serial online publishing is really the niche that blogs fill what was once the niche of print periodicals, newspapers, magazines, and journals as in academic journals. Blogs also fill the niche of personal journals and letters. Things evolve and change, and we are watching women’s communication blossom and cross-pollinate old and new technologies with met and unmet needs.
In the next installment on this topic, we go beyond the recognition that writing, online writing, and blogging are morphing into an all encompassing form of communication. This form is less segmented by the chasm that divided writing from publishing. Our current focus is less fixed on how you create content, as there are many ways to create, all the way from legal pad with pencil to tablet video creation. The writer or creator now has more more access to and influence over what we once would have called publishing and distribution.
Go to Part 2
Marking and Metadata
Marking
Marking photographs is essential for identifying individuals in them. Earlier this month I wrote a sad story about an orphaned photo to whom someone really tried to give family linkages.
Back and Front of Photograph of Unidentified Individuals
I found this photo in a store that rotates estate sale items through their space. It was in a basket with old post cards.
I am certain the person who wrote on the back of the photograph, probably a sister of the two men, was doing her very best to curate information for future generations of family. But the image has lost context. We do not know who wrote this, nor the last names any individuals. Age, specific location, and all event information are missing.
Do not let this happen to photos you want future generations to see and know who and what they are looking at.
Use a soft pencil to detail full names of individuals, date, place, photographer, and event on the back of the photo. Always use a clean dry surface on which to place the photo, face down, for marking on the back. A soft lead is a must as a hard lead can create an indentation in the images. More recent photos have a coating that does not allow regular pencil lead marking. For these types of glossy images, the Stabilo All Pencil, or another pencil that is very similar to it, is recommended. Do not use ink pens.
Metadata
Of course with digital technology marking is quite different. When you scan an image or take a digital picture of a picture you are creating an image file that has metadata attached to it.
Name of image, type of camera, technical specifications of the camera, and color profiles are some of information that can be attached to images. Descriptors and tags can also be created when images are put on the web.
This image from a talk I gave to Tucson Women Bloggers in March of this year shows some metadata fields that are attached to an image.
When you upload an image to a blogging platform, such as WordPress, you are offered fields to fill out about the image.
These fields, such as caption, alt text, and description, that you fill out, become metadata.
While you may not be able to see the fields just from looking at the image, when you examine the image in a reader that shows metadata, such as Preview on Apple products, the associated informational fields are displayed.
Take advantage of marking and labeling metadata fields so your images do not become orphans with pertinent identification lost to time.
Legacy Tools
April 2016 A to Z Challenge
Letter M Legacy of Marking and Metadata Tools for Legacy projects
The J of Legacy Tools – Journal
is for Journal in the A to Z of Tools for Legacy
Journal or Diary or Log?
Journal sounds more well thought out, perhaps more mature, than diary. Is a diary more of a record or report than a writerly endeavor? And of course online considerations now apply. Is a blog, a web log, automatically a type of diary? I am uncertain there are definitive answers to these questions for most journals. Some single theme journals and single purpose diaries do clearly parse into distinct groupings.
Specific Types of Journals
- Event Journal – These follow an event, usually sequentially, through a specific event process as in a pregnancy journal, and record information that pertains only to that topic.
- Travel Diary – Usually a diary is the right terms for these sorts of records as itinerary, food, discoveries, people met, transportation schedules and the like are far more apt to be recorded than long essay-like musings stirred up by experiences, although a travel diary can certainly be used for such reflections.
- Daily Diary/Journal. Again, these records can merely note the basics of the day: weather, appointments, summary mood, correspondence answered, readings, major news stories and the like, or these can record intimate, private thoughts about lessons learned, hurdles jumped, and wrongs righted.
- Medical Journal – When health is a concern both intentional and accidental medical journals are created. Sometimes it is necessary to keep track of states of a condition, or record data a physician wants you to monitor. Sometimes people are, well, a bit OCD and want to keep track of calories, steps, bad thoughts, or other things which they believe impact health.
- Food Diary – There are legitimate uses for food diaries. Migraine sufferers often find food triggers after keeping such a diary for a while, as do allergy sufferers.
- Business Journal – Keeping a detailed calendar sometimes creates a very good diary.
- Sometimes we use diaries or journals only when we are feeling a certain way or experiencing specific types of life happenings. Many people find that, for instance, their diaries are records of depressive events, life altering events, or certain seasons or holidays. These can be quite instructive after the fact.
When it is Your Journal
Do what you will with it. Them. A journal is a process that covers a lifetime and exists in many forms from yellowed cheap spiral binders to acid-free archival quality bound blank books. It is scattered from LiveJournal.com and defunct egroups postings to the cool free travel app your friends turned you on to – such as Journi or Roadtripping .
If you do not want anyone to ever read what you have written, burn the journal, or erase the drive and discard the computer.
When it is Someone Else’s Journal
My mother’s journal, parts of it anyway, are making appearances in the auto-ethnography /memoir I am writing.
It is not always easy to publish another’s persons most intimate thoughts. It is not always advisable. I was drawn in by an NPR interview with Alice and Oliver Novelist, Charles Bock, as he talked about his real life and losing a spouse to cancer when you have a young child. The whole interview is here:
I was not at all surprised that it took him 18 months to even be able to open the journal his wife kept of her life as she was undergoing chemo, bone marrow transplants, and then accepting her own process of dying.
Ethics of Journal Use
Of course it is not acceptable and probably not even legal to use someone else’s journal entries without their permission.
At times it is not even ethical to use your own journal entries that mention others unless your have those persons’ permissions, or you are ready to fight defamation law suits if what you say in those entries is interpreted unfavorably.
In the case of deceased individual’s journals or your own journal entries that reflect on others, living and dead, some of the considerations that might be worth considering include:
- Do you know the facts in the post to be untrue?
- Does the post deceive in some way?
- Does is engage in rampant speculation?
- Is it hurtful to the writer, her descendants, others who cannot defend themselves?
- Was it written or would its publication be vengeful?
- Is the information more important than potential negative consequences its publication might have.
- Is this important information for history or archival purposes?
A personal example of a publication that will happen but had to be discussed per ethics is found with my husband’s maternal grandmother’s diaries. He will publish it, probably on or through this site, but her status as a high ranking member of The Eastern Star, a secret society, and a woman who knew a great deal about goings on in her community due to her roles as Post Mistress and General Store owner will require some potential editing of family names and events, not for our family, as we have a fairly open source policy on information, but out of respect for other families in the community.
There is a reason that people say that “information is power.” It is true for personal information, too.
Legacy Tools
April 2016 A to Z Challenge
Letter J Legacy of Indices to Identity Tools for Legacy projects