Earthrise from the moon. Taken by Apollo 11.
Forty years ago today I was one kid doing the same thing that millions of other people in the world were doing at the same time. Watching breathlessly as Apollo 11 landed on the moon.
Two men walked on the moon’s surface, while one orbited alone above them. They are famous and will be remembered down through history. But behind them were 400,000 mostly nameless people who also made the moon landing possible. They included scientists and engineers who designed rockets and computers that had never been thought of before, but also “little old ladies” (LOL, NASA’s informal term for them) who wove cables.
That historic event changed how we view our home planet and changed our notion of what is humanly possible. I think we were all part of that history, in our own ways.
One of my favorite movies is “The Dish” a fun, celebratory little movie about the hopes, insecurities, and mistakes of the men of the Parkes radio telescope in Australia. Without these ordinary men, the world would not have seen Armstrong’s giant step. I love that movie because it reminds us that we are all the heartbeat of history. I’ve seen it four or five times and I never tire of it. You can rent it from Netflix.
“What was most significant about the lunar voyage was not that men set foot on the moon but that they set eye on the earth.” Norman Cousins
If you saw the moon landing, what do you remember?
It’s June, wedding season. Brides who spent months meticulously planning every moment are now encountering the unexpected. Things go wrong at weddings. At least, I hope so, within reason.
“Sometimes, the unexpected and offbeat make for the most fun memories and stories for grandkids in years to come.” So says yesterday’s article in the Walton Sun, “Weddings Sometimes Go Awry,” where you can read about some wedding glitches that have become etched into family lore.
Take my wedding for instance. I had pneumonia on my big day! The wedding went on anyway and 30 years later we joke about testing the “in sickness and in health” part of the vows a bit early. I’ll always remember how my new husband took me home, gave me my cough medicine, helped me into bed and slept on the sofa. Having pneumonia is what sets my wedding off from every other wedding in my experience. I got extra attention that day and to this day my children tell the story. My daughter is in the throes of planning her wedding–for September–down to minute detail. My hope for her is to have something unexpected happen that makes a good story and her wedding day truly memorable.
Did you have a “perfect” wedding or did something go awry that made family history?
There are many ways that people can tell their stories.
In one way, eight amateur clowns capered in the small performance space above Gigler’s Auto Body Shop on 19th Street in San Francisco before an audience of friends and family. (Under the circumstance, I really hope the name of shop is pronounced “gigglers!”). The show,”Clown Meltdown,” culminated months of work in Clown School, taught by Christina Lewis, who has studied clowning and performed as a clown in Europe, Mexico, and the United States.
Each of the evening’s eight performers had developed a uniquely personal clown character and a skit that told a story that was both deeply personal and universally recognizable. One muscular clown lovingly stroked his orange cone hat and sighed deeply with satisfaction. Then he was tempted from off stage by hands offering more and more orange cones. These he added to his body one by one, happy anew with each acquisition. By the end of the skit, he could hardly move, and in the end, he took off the original orange cone hat and held it ruefully to his cheek. The quest for more and more hadn’t brought this clown any more happiness than he started with.
In another act, a petite clown in a baggy black dress and red and yellow socks tried over and over to make it across the stage, hiding behind a series of screens that got smaller with each zany attempt. She finally succeeded, joyously and triumphantly, by banishing a clown chorus of hecklers and naysayers.
One after another the clowns mimed and danced stories from their hearts and experience, taking risks to tell their serious stories through play. I wish I had a better pic to do justice to the lively and intimate performance shared by a small community of people.
A steady flow of cars entered and exited the open iron gates of Golden Gate National Cemetery this afternoon.
My father, Richard C. Simmons, Jr., a World War II veteran, is interred there, along with my mother, in the company of 139,037 other souls. He shares the hallowed soil with Admiral Chester Nimitz and Private First Class Harold Gonsalves, posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor. There are 15 Medal of Honor recipients buried at Golden Gate.
Memorial Day commemorates men and women who died in U.S. military service. My father didn’t die in his war, but I took the ceremonial occasion to visit my parents’ graveside. Many other people were there, too, all separately paying their respects to someone. A young father pointed out a marker to his boy on the same slope where my parents rest. Two women sat on the grass in front of a grave stone. A family circled another one. A man about my husband’s age, wearing camouflage pants, stood overlooking a section filled with the fallen from 1967.
My husband survived his war, Vietnam. One who did not survive his war was Kenneth H. Ramsey, my mother’s brother, but he has no grave to visit. He was lost in a torpedo bomber in the South Pacific in 1944. He left no children and everyone within my knowledge who knew him is gone now too. Who do you want to remember this Memorial Day?
One picture may be worth a thousand words, but some photos are almost worthless without a few words to identify them.
I found this mystery photo after my grandmother Elizabeth died. Born in 1903 in Oklahoma, she lived an interesting and paripetetic life until settling down in Spokane, Washington in 1943. She moved from place to place with her children during the Great Depression, as my grandfather went from job to job. Before that, her father, a Presbyterian minister, moved his family from church to church in Oklahoma, Kansas, and California. Somewhere along the way, this photo may have been taken. She may be one of the children pictured. From the flat landscape, they may be somewhere in Oklahoma. The point is, I don’t know.
My grandmother left no information to indicate why she possessed this photograph and had kept it for the nearly 100 years that she lived. The questions I have about this mysterious photo are ones we should answer about all the significant photographs we leave for others to find:
- Who are the people in the picture?
- What is their relationship to the photo owner?
- Who took the photograph?
- Where was the picture taken? In what country and state? Near what town?
- When was the picture taken?
- What was the occasion of the picture? In this case, where had they come from? Where were they going? Why were they on the road? Why did they stop here?
Maybe the Photo Detective, Maureen Taylor, can provide some answers about my mystery photograph. I’ve sent it to her, and if she discovers anything, I will fill you in.
It that’s what you think, think again.
An eventful weekend. Satuday I attended a regional Toastmasters conference where a champion speaker Jim Key talked about using the power of stories in speeches. To the frequent objection, “But I don’t have any interesting stories,” he offered this: “Stuff happens, pay attention.” He added, “Live an interesting life, on purpose. Have a child, get a dog.”
This objection about not having stories comes not only from Toastmasters but also from ordinary people about telling and recording their life stories. Jim meant that everyone has interesting stories, if they think about it.
The truth of this became apparent to me at a retirement party I attended the next day. My daughter’s soon-to-be mother-in-law retired from a 30-year career teaching Spanish to high school students. She also taught adult Spanish classes. This admirable woman raised three sons as a single mom, she’s an excellent photographer who exhibits at local shows, and she travels the world. Attending her party were past and present students, friends from her high school days, teacher friends, church friends, Red Hat friends, sons, daughters in law, and grandchildren. She has lots and lots of stories in her and more to come. At the party, she announced,”In my twenties I did what my mother wanted. In my thirties I did what my husband wanted. In my forties I did what I wanted–and in my fifties I stopped feeling guilty about it. In my sixties, well watch out. And in my seventies, life will be even better.”
Every person in the room had great stories, too. A woman in her eighties raised a developmentally disabled son and last year she traveled around Cape Horn. Another woman told a funny story about training her daughter’s dog–a Mastiff mix who is “165 pounds of stupid.” Another woman talked about her son in the Army who is serving in Afghanistan near the Pakistan border. They communicate on Facebook.
Stuff certainly does happen. And it’s interesting.
The May issue of the Biographer’s Craft newsletter is out. I love this free newsletter, edited by James McGrath
Morris for “writers and readers of biography.” It is packed with relevant news and interesting articles. The May issue contains a story about how David O. Stewart, author of Impeached: The Trial of Andrew Johnson and the Fight for Lincoln’s Legacy, manages a huge cast of minor characters. Family histories can be full of aunts, uncles, and cousins of the first, second, and third kind. Company histories can be populated by an overwhelming number of players also, so I found this article of special interest. “You have to keep people in balance,” Stewart said. “They should get only as much air time as their significance warrants.” It may be tricky to accomplish this in a family history where every person is a relative or sometimes in a company history where the impulse is to be as inclusive as possible. How does Stewart do it? Here’s an excerpt from the newsletter article:
Stewart researches the person’s life with an eye for those things that will illuminate their behavior in the tale he is telling, “You know how they behaved,” he said, “so go back and look for parts in their lives that give some explanation as to why they acted as they did.” The research is the key. Authors gather more information about their subjects than needs to be revealed. “You look for personality traits that will be central to the story you are telling,” Stewart said. “You try to find expressions of that in their lives.”
Good advice for family historians and memoirists–”look for the personality traits that will be central to the story you are telling” and “find expressions of that in their lives.”
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CBS Sunday Morning had a segment on amnesia on May 3 and it has stuck with me for over a week. A woman found herself in an unknown city without memory of who she was or how she got there. She had lost all memory for her life before. Asked what went through her mind, her answer was, “Fear. A lot of fear.” This is an extreme situation. But it made me think that history is transgenerational memory. We know where we came from and how we got to where we are. When we know this, we aren’t so vulnerable to fear. We are braver, more confident, more assured. We have a frame of reference and a metaphorical gyroscope to keep us righted. Even more than political and social history, family history has the power to act as a gyroscope in our personal lives.
For a personal history aficionado, I am uncharacteristically anti mother’s day. On my more cynical days, I view it as a forced event for commercial purposes. My daughter always remembers the day, but I usually tell her to just skip it. And I mean it.
Of course, I like hearing from her. She sent me a greeting card this year with sweet notes from her and my soon-to-be son-in-law and enclosed a Starbucks gift card. She called me this morning, too. But it’s not like that TV commercial where mothers all over the world faint from shock when their grown children call. My daughter calls me every couple of days. And I see her every month or so, because she lives only 3 hours away by car. I am very fortunate, I know.
Instead of being Oscar the Grouchy Mom, I should welcome any occasion that reminds us to visit and listen to our families. That can be done without flower arrangements or champagne brunches or paper cards with printed sentiments. If my mother were alive today, this is what I would like to do.
When my brothers and I were children, my mother had a big book of wall paper samples. On the first of May, we would sit at the kitchen table with scissors and glue, and make little baskets from the wallpaper. In them we would put buttercups that we picked from the fields near our house. Then we’d put the baskets on the doorsteps of neighbors, ring the doorbell, and run away. If mom were alive today, I’d put a handmade May basket on her porch with herbs from my garden.
Thanks, mom, for that memory.
What is your favorite StoryCorps story?
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