Reacquaintence and Identity: Miss Veach is a Peach

I had lost this photograph about 20 years ago. It's my first class picture. It's my Kindergarten class and was taken, as you can see on the menu board propped up in front of us, in 1976. And while I had managed to hold on to all my elementary school class photos for grades 1 through 5, I had somehow lost this one. But here it is again. One of my former classmates unexpectedly returned it to me by scanning their own copy of it and posting it on Facebook. I'm in the third row, third in from the left. I'm wearing what pretty clearly looks like a navy blue sweater with a stitched downhill skier on it.
I recently finished reading some essays about youth, digital media and identity. Most of them discussed how youth are exploring,expanding,probing and challenging their identities using new digital media production and distribution tools. The essays focused primarily on social networking sites like Facebook, MySpace or YouTube where millions of youth are providing social scientists of every ilk with the meat of their tenure . I thought, if today's youth are busy with the basics of digital identity creation, how is Facbook (and that does seem to be the current hub for this activity) allowing my own generation to explore the history of their own identity? How are we using it to collectively explore who we once were and especially, what we've become?

The popularity of Facebook makes reacquainting simple. The rediscovery of so many people you had begun to expect you'd never hear much more about other than a passing word are suddenly reappearing and aggregating all sorts of personal information about themselves and putting it on display, a kind of show and tell. And I mean that in the most optimistic sort of way. I remember running into an old high school friend 10 years ago and listening in awe while she gave me the lowdown on who had married and those adventurous few from our class who had been brave enough to wade into the murky depths of parenthood. Now those very people are reorganizing digitally, their lives, their new middle-aged identities being haphazardly stitched together through status updates, photographs, article postings, groups joined, books read and videos posted. Quite a few of them are now firmly ensconced in parenthood. But your concept of them, of who they are and how they relate to you, draws from memories you formed 10, 20 or even 30 years ago. So there's this terrific little jolt when you learn a little about who that person has become. On Facebook, their profile picture usually offers the first clue. For many of these profiles, my own included, there's a picture of a child. Sometimes they're posing with the kid(s), a partner, or their family. They all say, "Here, at a glance, is what I've become." Sometimes people have gained a lot of weight.

There's a nice little nostalgia trade active on Facebook. Everybody is scanning old photographs and posting them. High school photos mostly, but family photographs too. They sometimes kick off little conversations. I wish there was more video. It's around, but rare.

This Kindergarten class photo, for obvious reasons, is the best and most endearing piece of the Facebook nostalgia trade that I've come across. I'm lucky to have nothing but the warmest memories of that class and Miss Veach, the Bea Arthur-like woman standing somewhat drably amongst us little munchkins and who was our teacher. Her personality was anything but drab though, even if her outfit from that day wasn't particularly flattering. I remember her being a woman in charge, and yes, her personality was even a bit like Bea Arthur's in Maude. She was Maude-like; bold, a touch acerbic but ultimately warmhearted and maternal at her feminist core. Many of us peed on the floor of her classroom, but I'm not going to name names. When I was in first grade I drew a picture that I was allowed to take across the hallway and deliver to Miss Veach. I don't remember what the picture was of though I did get to present it to her in front of her entire class. It all felt so heroic. After taking my picture, she put an arm around me and explained to her current batch of Kindergartners that I was one of her former students who had since ventured forth into the more refined elements of first grade.

Today Is For Them

Because Past is Prologue

Men may differ as to the particular form of governmental activity with respect to industry or business but nearly all are agreed that private enterprise in times such as these cannot be left without assistance and without reasonable safeguards lest it destroy not only itself but also our process of civilization.
-Franklin D. Rossevelt, 1934

More About Libraries and Digital Storytelling

In the pre-Internet days of multimedia publishing, pioneer digital storytelling enthusiasts showed people how to digitize the old photos in their family albums, interview their relatives and digitize the interviews, then arrange the audiovisual elements into a narrative, often with voiceover narration. While this technique can be applied to personal genealogy and history of pure entertainment, digital storytelling, when used to construct a narrative presentation of true historical events, personages, and geographical locations, is one way of introducing students to participatory media, to the communication basics of compelling narrative production, and to local civic affairs. Journalism doesn't have to be global. Hyperlocal journalism that delves more deeply into local events than mass media does can also serve as a springboard for civic engagement.

I had been reading these MacArthur Foundation Series on Digital Media and Learning books online and enjoying them quite a bit before realizing just how badly I wanted to actually hold one of them while I read it. Not just because I can establish a more meaningful, in-depth dialogue with a text when its medium is a book with tangible weight and scent, but because I wanted something to covet as an object, to hold this nifty little collection of essays exploring so much of what had been kicking up all this dust in my own head the last few years.

Howard Reingold's essay, "Using Participatory Media and Public Voice to Encourage Civic Engagement," from which the above quote comes from, deftly explores some of the issues concerning youth, civic engagement and digital journalism/storytelling that I've been haphazardly exploring over the last few years. Namely I've been kicking around how we take these elements and make them part of our library programming. What would such programming look like? A series of workshops? What are our goals? Do we explore this first with a round-table of local teens? What do we discuss and are they even interested in the first place? I'm pretty confident they are. In fact, the hyperlocal journalism Reingold mentions is already happening in after school and community-based programs lucky to have, more often then not, foundational support.

Public Libraries aren't looking to stir the pot of community controversy (their very existence is often controversy enough), but I do think they have a vital role to play in offering their patrons with the tools necessary to tell their stories (even controversial ones) and, ideally, engage their communities. Because after all, once the story has been crafted, it needs to find its audience. Which is why I've also been kicking around so much dust thinking about DIY marketing and distribution models.

Cold Marathon

I'm up early. Had a dream that I was running a marathon. The course was a large, somewhat ramshackle hotel. We ran the hallways. Much to my frustration I ran off course, confused by the media covering the event. Or something like that. I awoke up angry, blankets tossed aside. Sleep had fled.

It's cold out. The heater is kicking on every few minutes. I'm listening to Abby on the monitor and can tell she's thinking about waking up. Soon I'll be a mermaid.

The Dregs Of Winter

Looks like a good time to start work on that summer documentary I've been kicking around. Though our little Winter baby probably has other plans in store for me. A little late night walking of hallways maybe? Definitely. Most definitely.

Those Hands Belong To You!

At a little over 7-weeks now Megan is beginning to take some wonderful movement away from the basics of feeding, sleeping, pooping and crying. There's something very obviously primal about this first stage, for both the baby and the parent. Your life becomes consumed by the pure necessity of keeping both the child and yourself afloat. You slog through it, exhausted and amazed. Wonder is tempered by ample handfuls of the mundane.

Megan discovered her hands a little over a week ago. All that involuntary hand movement, a kind of infant interpretive dance of flailing, bonking and impassioned conducting, has been slowing up some as Megan pauses more and more frequently to stare at her fingers before placing them determinedly into her waiting mouth. The discovery of hands as boob proxies.

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Why John Lennon's (Just Like) Starting Over is a Delicious Proustian Donut

(Just Like) Starting Over reminds me so palpably of being a child that it's become one of a handful of my most powerful sonic Madeleines. I love it not just for its slick melodic sheen (hello 80's reverb!) and pop craftsmanship but for how it stirs the Proustian particulars of being young and awakening to the world.

It reminds me most powerfully of the summer of 1981. It stirs up a set of powerful memories associated with the summer my family spent a month vacationing at the Chautauqua Institute in Bemus Point, New York. Bats would occasionally get trapped indoors and have to be chased out with broomsticks. One lazy afternoon I watched Bjorn Borg playing at Wimbledon on a little black and white TV my brothers had wisely seen fit to have accompany us on our travels.

The Institute was and still is, a gated arts-community, a privileged summer resort created over 100 years ago with the purpose of spiritually nurturing and equipping Sunday school teachers before it rapidly expanded to encompass the secular arts and the importance of life-long learning amongst the well-heeled. In the summer of 1981, I had just turned 10 years old. I had a small clock radio I had picked up at a neighborhood garage sale. It looked similar to this.
There was a small single speaker that always crackled on with a second or two of feedback before settling in. And there was this song, an ode to Lennon's fealty to mid-life domesticity (it was released October 9, 1980, Lennon's 40th birthday) and its accompanying commitment to monogamy and child rearing. It went to #1 in both in the US and UK just a couple weeks after Lennon's murder.

Megan Marjorie Breitenbach

Born 11:16 am, November 19th. 8 pounds, 21 inches. Welcome to the world little baby girl!

What We Do When We're Waiting For Our Little Sister

Wine For Later

Took a walk yesterday afternoon to help coax the baby along. Didn't work, though Abby fell asleep. We stopped at In Fine Spirits and Cathy, whose been dry for the better part of the last year for obvious reasons, chose 5 bottles of wine. We're looking forward to sampling them over the holidays. Cathy won't be able to drink much given her breastfeeding responsibilities but I've promised to pick up the slack.

Lou Lou's House of Christmas

My Mom took part in the Bay Village "Homes For the Holidays" tour yesterday. The Plain Dealer, Cleveland's last daily, ran a nice story on the tour earlier this week, focusing on my parents house. That's my Mom sitting in our living room. You can read the article here.

This is our dining room. My Mom and Christmas have a long and fascinatingly complex history. Entire rooms in the basement of this house are filled with holiday decorations. I used to warn my Mom that come the following Christmas I would be discreetly placing price-tags on each of these decorations, taking out an ad in the paper and working a cash register in our kitchen as I opened the house for retail sales.

That's our house. Well, my parents house. They moved there a few months shy of my second birthday in 1973 which means they've lived there for close to 35 years now. I haven't lived there since the summer of '93 or '94.. But I love the house deeply. My interest in family folklore, in the idea of place and in first wave suburbs (built after WWI and before WWII) all stems from this house. In fact, my very idea of home, or the one I'm trying to create with Cathy and Abby, finds its roots in this home.

I'm the second caroler from the left.

Here's my favorite quote from the Plain Dealer article:

Mary Lou is not the only one with a hobby that will be evident to tour-goers. There's the little matter in the living room of the 7-foot-high, 7-foot-wide 1916 Wurlitzer band organ, acquired about 12 months ago by Art Breitenbach, a collector of such musical instruments.

Band organs most often were found in the center of carousels, providing the musical accompaniment to carnivals and amusement parks.

"There's no volume control," said Mary Lou, a tad dryly. Art, sitting near the meticulously restored organ, just smiled.

Disciple of Sun Ra

Election Day

I'm hoping to roll out a lot more of these more personal mini-documentaries over the course of the next year. This one, this awesome slice of history, was too good to pass up. And while its dedicated to Abby and Sean, its impetus was the passing of Studs Terkel, whose spirit was right there in the streets of Chicago with us.

Super-8

The Breitenbach family draws names each Christmas. It works like this: around autumn somebody will be inspired to rip up several small scraps of paper, write the various names of the Breitenbach Family Singers on them, hastily fold them and finally ask a volunteer to step forward and choose names for the rest of us. You're then responsible for providing a Christmas gift for that relative. A lot of families do this. There inevitably comes a point when things like leaving home, graduating from college, moving and starting a family all conspire to make the purchasing of gifts for each member of your birth family and their progeny (to say nothing of your own offspring) completely infeasible. Us Breitenbach's have gone from 6 to 15 (soon 16!) in less then 15 years.

So one buyer, one receiver. We keep the price to what seems an appropriately modest cap of $75. My Dad drew my name this year. When he and my Mom came to visit a couple weeks ago I told him exactly what I want. About 20 years ago my Dad borrowed a film splicer, combed through his grocery bag of 30 or so reels of Super-8 family films he shot from the late 60's through the early 80's, and combined some of what he thought was the best footage into a couple larger reels. I want him to digitize those suckers! Film stock is notorious for giving itself over to the ravages of time-- it decomposes, its picture begins to fade, it threatens to crumble. Given my love of the grainy poetic texture and glimpses of family folklore Super-8 films reveal, I'm worried about the state of these reels.

Besides that, I have no idea what's on these films. We had a projector and screen. I remember my brothers, fleeting amateur Super-8 auteur's themselves, playing these films down in our basement in the late 70's. But it's been over 25 years.

Freedom From Fear

I began David M. Kennedy's Pulitzer Prize winning book Freedom From Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929-1945 the other night. In a queasy parallel with our own economic woes, it begins on the cusp of the stock market crash of 1929, an event that ushered in the Great Depression and all its consequent hardships. This massive economic disruption, Kennedy points out, also came to symbolize the end of an era of massive and prolonged industrial expansion.

The old adage, "may you live in interesting times," seems particularly apt in describing the tectonic social and economic shifts that occurred during the first one third of the twentieth century. Kennedy describes a study commissioned by the Hoover Administration, Recent Social Trends, that sought to detail the many aspects of American life at this time. This included, according to Kennedy:

the Great War, mass immigration, race riots, rapid urbanization, the rise of giant industrial combines like U.S. Steel, Ford, and General Motors, new technologies like electrical power, automobiles, radios, and motion pictures, novel social experiments like Prohibition, daring campaigns for birth control, a new frankness about sex, woman's suffrage, the advent of mass-market advertising and consumer financing. "These," the researchers declared, "are but a few of the many happenings which have marked one of the most eventful periods of our history."

Astounding, to say the least.

Yes We Can Can Can!

That's what I'm talkin' about. So, so sweet.

Vote

We voted this morning. We're feeling very good about it.

Halloween 2008

After the trick or treating, Abby was allowed to pick two pieces of candy. She prolonged her sugar buzz by choosing a couple suckers.