2020 Hindsight

Senate Historian writes book on the Washington Press Corps

Donald Ritchie is the Senate Historian. His upcoming book will be a history of the Washington Press Corps from FDR to 9/11.

Ritchie, a prolific author who specializes in oral history [he's the author of Doing Oral History: A Practical Guide], has just put the finishing touches on his latest book, a look at how the press has covered Congress and the federal government in the last 70 years.

The book, High Level Sources: The Making of the Washington Press Corps, will be published early next year by Oxford University Press. It is a sequel to his earlier one that examined press coverage of Congress before Franklin D. Roosevelt became president.

Ritchie's new book begins with Roosevelt's inauguration and ends on Sept. 11, 2001.

[...] "Until FDR became president, Congress was the center of attention of news coverage of the nation's capital," Ritchie said last week in his book-lined office in the Hart Senate Office Building. "Then, because of FDR's personality and his mastery of the new technology of radio, the center of attention shifted to the White House."

Note to self: what category to file this under? Storytelling? Democracy? Current Events?

Ira Glass at Transom

Ira Glass is a guest-something on Transom this week. Transom's a site devoted to conversation about public radio. (and has some good discussion of audio equipment). Good stuff.

I started working at NPR's headquarters in Washington when I was 19 but I wasn't competent at writing and structuring my own stories until I was 27. I've never met anyone who took longer, and I've met hundreds of people who work in radio. Back then, I made my living by filling in as a production assistant on the various national news shows, and by taking day jobs as a temp typist around Washington. I was sort of hopeless at all the basic tasks of recognizing and shaping a story.

Oral history project explores women in science

Centered around University of Wisconson, Madison. They're looking for more interviews with women who've worked in any science.

I'm looking for anything having to do with oral history and General Electric (both of my grandparents worked for GE.)

The last section of this article, Role Models Needed, (scroll down to "The Broader View") discusses the first and only woman president of ASME, Nancy Fitzroy, describing her experiences at GE (She knew my grandmother there).

"GE finally realized that I was doing the same work," she said, "and that I should be called an engineer." The title didn't end her barriers. "Once when I was up for a raise, my boss was forced to find out how much money my husband was making," she said. "They wouldn't let me make more than my husband. It was the paternalistic tenor of the time—the 1960s—but it was something like 'little girl, it's just not a good idea to make more than your husband.' "

Diana's Secret Video/Audio tapes

MSNBC has a story about how NBC (oh, how those news media companies love that thing called 'synergy') will air 2 hours of broadcast of secret Diana videos and audios.

I learned of it through Richard Hess, the person who did the audio restoration, and who recently presented lotsa cool info at a workshop on audio restoration that I attended.

Note his 'Now It Can Be Told' disclaimer:

Undertaken with the strictest security and the author's representative present. Do not ask me about this, buy the book. As always, I did not retain any copies of this material.

Writing about the fires - makes for historial account, healing

This post is a blend of the themes of the two previous posts: Fires in N. San Diego County, and Oral History/Storytelling. North County Times publishes a story about a library's writing workshop to remember experiences of the fire.

McHenry said the written documentation of people's thoughts and reactions to the blaze were not only therapeutic, but historically significant.

"Historically, the best time to do this is as soon as you can, before memories fade away and you forget all the bad," McHenry said. "It's healing to write things down, and we have had a lot of people severely affected (by the fire). It is a part of oral history that needs to be preserved."

Listen with Grandma: oral history that's both high tech/high touch

Jennifer Smith at the MIT Media Lab invents a rocking chair that's made for oral history.

In Smith's system, the elderly person sits on a rocking chair in front of a large screen displaying a life-size, graphic image of a little girl. She tells a story of her own and then asks the person in the rocking chair questions about their life.

In tests, Smith noticed that people's rocking patterns tended to change when they finished a story: "Some people come to a stop, while others speed up," she says. So an accelerometer on the back of the rocking chair monitors movement, feeding information back to a computer that controls what the little girl says and when she says it.

Pixar dumps Disney

Wow. I guess Steve Jobs didn't blink. This is a story made for the pithy headline, such as : Pixar twists the Mouse's Tale. No, no. Make it Luxo, as in Luxo twists the Mouse's tale. Can't you hear that little squeak? Ah well, I guess Luxo isn't as well known as he (?) should be.

Voices from the days of slavery: Former slaves tell their stories

At the Library of Congress [via boingBoing]

These interviews, conducted between 1932 and 1975, capture the recollections of twenty-three identifiable people born between 1823 and the early 1860s and known to have been former slaves. Several of the people interviewed were centenarians, the oldest being 130 at the time of the interview. The almost seven hours of recordings were made in nine Southern states and provide an important glimpse of what life was like for slaves and freedmen. The former slaves discuss how they felt about slavery, slaveholders, how slaves were coerced, their families, and, of course, freedom. It is important to keep in mind, however, that all of those interviewed spoke sixty or more years after the end of their enslavement, and it is their full lives, rather than their lives during slavery, that are reflected in their words.

I've been doing a bit of research into matters of oral history. Been ripping MP3s from the audio CDs I made from interviewing my grandfather (originally recorded on cassette tapes). Great to see the conversion of old analog audio into digital (and downloadable) form (Real Audio and MP3).