Knowing and keeping our parents, grandparents, and nursing home residents

Always a Folklorist, , ,

From Forella:  I have asked Angela to write out and post this message, but these are my thoughts, as will no doubt be apparent.  Angela told me of the death of the songwriter John Prine.  My era of music was a little before his, but I know Ross has always loved his songs.  I do remember one song of his that always made me just sob every time I heard it—Hello in There.  As I have become more and more isolated—both because of my fading vision and especially from the social distancing to combat this coronavirus, the message of that song has haunted me.  We need to look into those “hollow ancient eyes” and greet and love the individuals behind those eyes.  We need to know them, love them, keep them in our hearts—there IS room in our hearts for each of them.  I talked with Katherine, and I think we have devised a way to help with that—a way to hearten and keep our elders—people like me, a way to touch, to clasp at least some of them to our hearts and always remember.

From Katherine:  Thanks, Forella.  Like you, I remember just stopping everything and crying my eyes out when I first heard Prine’s song Hello in There.  My clearest memory is of Joan Baez singing it.  It was so very moving.  So, after you and I talked by phone, I contacted a former colleague of mine, Sandra Dolby, another folklorist who had studied personal narratives, stories people tell from their own lives. I asked her if she had any suggestions on how to reach older people who are now so threatened by this virus.  Here is what she wrote back to me.

Katherine, I will be happy to pass along a prototype of an interview questionnaire that I have used in one form or another with classes at IU but also with other groups that want to collect personal experience stories and reminiscences from older individuals.  Please feel free to adapt it in whatever way seems best for your purposes.  But let me say this about our current situation:  Because we are all “sheltering in place,” now is an ideal time to record electronically this kind of interview over many days, with as many people as possible.  And while I do think it would be a good project for young people, my own suggestion is that the many healthy Generation Xers and Millenials out there use this as an opportunity to actually know and keep alive in your memory the people who are your parents and grandparents.  There is so much of the memory, skill, tradition, and wisdom that is lost whenever anyone dies.  It is hard to accept that this might happen within your own family, but we are seeing that it could.  And you who are adults yourselves can be the good fieldworkers who ask the kind of questions and show the kind of interest that will allow your elders to reveal who they are and what they know to another caring adult.  It will be a treasure for them.  Believe me. Here is a pdf of the questionnaire prototype:

Elder-questionnaireDownload

From Rayette:  Thank you for getting this for us, Katherine.  I will share it with my daughters and with my brother’s children.  You are right.  We are now the generation that may well disappear in a flash.  They need to ask us about our lives.  I hadn’t really thought of that. Fortunately I can still ask some of these questions of my own parents, but I worry because they are in assisted living, and there have been people there who have come down with the virus.  The old people rarely recover.  It is a very difficult time.

From Ross:  John Prine’s death is a deep wound.  This is a harsh time.  Mom I will ask Angela to help record our conversation as I ask you some of these questions.  And since I have no kids, maybe Angela can help do the reverse.  You may learn things about me you never wanted to know. 

From Katherine:  I think that is the point.  We should all welcome the opportunity to share our experience of being a human on this planet before we leave and no longer have that option.  The kind of intimacy that comes with personal narratives—that is the saving grace of our human species.

*All posts listed as “Handel blog” are texts that use the fictional characters in my book The Handel Letters: A Biographical Conversation.  As in that book, the posts will often reference things from Handel’s life or time period as starting points.  And the post will cite a page or paragraph in the book when it seems relevant.   Find The Handel Letters.

Helping with home crafts

Always a Folklorist, The Handel Seminar Continues, ,

Handel blog 7*

From Katherine:  I have several friends who are making surgical style facemasks for family, friends, health care workers, farm workers, or whoever needs them.  There is information online about patterns and the best kind of material, and people have been innovative in finding ways to make the masks more effective, reusable, and more comfortable. Given the overwhelming need for masks as this coronavirus has spread worldwide, I think this response is wonderful.  It reminds me of Lydia’s sewing project when she learned of the many poor or abandoned children on London’s streets.  She wrote to Handel:  “Along with a few other women here in our Upper Brook Street neighborhood, I have started a sewing circle.  We call ourselves grands-mères sans petits-enfants.  We make blankets and clothing for some of the same children your Fund supports.” (p. 346) I expect some of those blankets were actually domestic patchwork quilts of the sort that were just becoming popular in both Britain and the American colonies.

From Peter:  I’ve seen some of the fancier quilted artifacts at the Victoria and Albert Museum, but I don’t remember seeing anything that looked homemade.  I think the museum pieces were articles of clothing and probably fashioned by professional tailors.  I’m surprised Lydia knew how to make a quilt.

From Rebecca:  Patchwork quilts were fairly common throughout Britain, but they weren’t preserved in museums.  Like so much handcraft, especially that produced by women, it was regarded as unworthy of display in collections.  But, truthfully, the whole notion of collecting was still pretty new at that time.  Even fine art collections were a new kind of investment for wealthy people.

From Katherine:  I’m very lucky to have some quilts left to me by my grandmothers.  These are mostly pieced quilts, but some are appliqué.  I imagine they both would have been able to sew a bushel of facemasks in no time.  Sadly, I never learned the sewing skill from either of them.  I’ll attach a picture of some of the quilts I have so you can see why I am so delighted to have them.  They really are beautiful. 

Until next time, enjoy the photo.

*All posts listed as “Handel blog” are texts that use the fictional characters in my book The Handel Letters: A Biographical Conversation.  As in that book, the posts will often reference things from Handel’s life or time period as starting points.  And the post will cite a page or paragraph in the book when it seems relevant.   Find The Handel Letters.

Maybe it’s misinformation

Sparks from Science and Society, The Handel Seminar Continues, ,

Handel blog 6*

From Katherine: If you watch television, some sources say do wear a mask.  Others say it is unnecessary, just a recommendation.  Some say find that malaria medicine; it will cure the virus.  Doctors say nothing has been proven to work against COVID-19.  Some news sources say things are starting to turn around.  Others say the worst is yet to come.  How do you know which sources to trust?  How did people get accurate news stories in Handel’s day?  Journals, letters, and newspapers were a lot slower than today’s television, Internet, and other media.  Notwithstanding their slowness, were eighteenth-century sources more accurate?  Could you trust them?

Defoe’s Journal of the Plague Year was written in 1722, 57 years after the Great Plague of London in 1665.  Critics still debate over what to call Defoe’s work.  Is it history, historical fiction, a novel?  In our discussions of Lydia’s letters to Handel, we, too, wondered about the source of one story she mentioned—a piece of news that reached London before Handel had returned from a 1750 trip to the continent.  There had evidently been a carriage accident near Harlem in the Netherlands in which Handel was injured.  Peter commented: “Actually, as Brad suggested, it was odd that this incident was reported among Handel’s friends in London.  Obviously Handel himself was not the one sharing the information, maybe a newspaper story instead.” (p. 478) How did people in London know?  Was it a rumor?  What did they know?  Handel’s friends must have wondered and worried as they had only vague secondary sources on the incident until Handel himself came home and set the story straight. 

From Ross:  I don’t know much about it, but I know there is a source people can use today to help them decide whether the news we hear is reliable.  In Handel’s day, the sources were fairly limited, but today there are countless sources of varying quality.  You can get an app called Newsguard that is supposed to give an evaluation of news sources derived through a set of criteria and applied by professional journalists.  The idea is simply to give a grade to the source itself, not to dissect any given news item. 

From Angela:  Forella wanted me to mention that we have been watching one of those Great Courses Plus series of lectures, this one titled Fighting Misinformation.  So far, it has been pretty interesting, and I think they did mention that Newsguard app as well.

From Clara:  Well, this is all very interesting, but I was expecting someone to comment on the movie about Farinelli, but since we haven’t moved in that direction, let me suggest a movie you should all watch while you are sheltering in place.  It’s Teacher’s Pet—the 1958 version with Clark Gable and Doris Day, not the newer one.  It’s about journalism, and to me anyway, what we are really trying to grapple with here is a major change in journalism from earlier times.  Watch the movie and let me know what you think.  You can read some info on it here.

From Katherine:  Thanks Clara.  Teacher’s Pet is one of my favorite movies, and you are right.  It raises many questions about the role of journalism then and now.  A good suggestion for something to watch this evening.  Stay safe, everyone.

*All posts listed as “Handel blog” are texts that use the fictional characters in my book The Handel Letters: A Biographical Conversation.  As in that book, the posts will often reference things from Handel’s life or time period as starting points.  And the post will cite a page or paragraph in the book when it seems relevant.   Find The Handel Letters.