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So many stories


Airehead

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1 hour ago, Airehead said:

 My Uncle Bill was a good humble man. He always said, instead of judging people, spent the time trying to figure out where they come from.

Sage advice.  Until you have walked a mile in someone else's shoes...  I always thought it would be incredibly illuminating to go through a day as someone else, and see what their own private Idaho is like. :)

 

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2 minutes ago, Philander Seabury said:

Sage advice.  Until you have walked a mile in someone else's shoes...  I always thought it would be incredibly illuminating to go through a day as someone else, and see what their own private Idaho is like. :)

 

Agreed. 

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I converted video tapes of my dad telling stories to DVD when I was off work with a broken hip. I had all my DVDs in a big album that included all my videos including all my sons basketball games. My son borrowed the DVDs and I never saw them again. 😢

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My uncle was a college English professor and a great storyteller.  He recorded a number of tapes with family stories from his childhood and gave copies to his siblings.  I found the old tapes while we were cleaning out my parents' house and had them converted to digital.  My  Uncle passed too early, but my Mom loved listening to those tapes.   It was like having a conversation with him all over again.

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6 hours ago, Airehead said:

Reflecting on yesterday, I offer this word of advice. Get your family stories taped or written down. They give valuable insight and offer humor too. 
One from yesterday.  My Uncle Bill was a good humble man. He always said, instead of judging people, spent the time trying to figure out where they come from. 
 

Someone who served with him told this tale. Bill was walking across a joint force base. By this time he had switched from Marines to Navy. He was a Navy Captain at this point which of course has its own ranking system to screw things up. 

Captain is the 21st rank in the United States Navy , ranking above Commander and directly below Rear Admiral Lower Half. 


So back to the point, an Army Major stops him in the hallway and tears into him about some perceived fault about some military custom.  What exactly is lost to time.  The hallway got very quiet.

Major goes on and on  pauses for a moment and my Naval Captain uncle says, “ If you are feeling better now son, let’s walk away and forget  this ever happened. You must be having an awful bad day. “

Major realized the error and starts shaking in his boots and saluting all over himself .  
Bill says, good day and moves on.

The guy who told the story ended with, I had the honor to be peering out of our office on the incident.  I whispered to the guy gawking with me only one word and that was class.  

 

 

Yeah that’s quiet a foux pas.  Navy Captain is an O-6, an Army Major is an O-4 so he outranked him by two grades and probably 10 years of service.  An O-6 is also a “Flag Officer” and not someone to be F’d with.  Us Army guys always seem to struggle with Navy rank too!

My sister started interviewing & recoding my mom about 5 years before she had her stroke.  She then did so with my brother and a few months later he died unexpectedly.  She has been interviewing as many of our family as she can. 

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No, audio is not going to work too well in my family especially coming from my mother:  we don't understand 80% of what is said in Chinese.  Even when my father was alive and him fully bilingual, I suppose some storytelling from him. But quite brief.  I do miss his voice....calm and friendly that was his personality. 

So...the best thing in my family, is to ferret out the stories slowly in conversation...takes years.  Usually 1 to 1 situation.

While Chris' sister is the interviewer recorder.....I suppose I'm a blogger-storyteller in my family (my eldest niece is the other one. Yay it's good to have another kin take up the torch) with photos. I know my niece is....because she tells snippets of our family history...to the open Internet. I see it via her twitter feed.

 Myself and several sisters take a ton of photos over the years to help prompt those stories.  

I will have 2 blog posts this summer that tie together big history events and how it affected my extended family history. A bit about what I've done prior to cycling...there is a link to national historic timelines directly to my own extended families' journeys.

 

 

 

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