WEBSITE UPDATE–STORY CORPS
May 6, 2018
We just returned from the Jack Williamson Lectureship in Portales, New Mexico. As usual, it was wonderful–it’s always my favorite convention of the year. I love the luncheon (S.M. Stirling spoke this year), the panels, and the forensics lectures my daughter gives (this year’s was on the Sierra LaMar case.) And I love the chance to see old friends like Betty Williamson and Gene Bundy. But this year, there was an additional highlight: NPR’s StoryCorps.
For those of you who haven’t heard of StoryCorps, it’s a project National Public Radio embarked on in 2003 to record conversations between people and create an oral history of ordinary people and their experiences. They’ve recorded thousands of 40-minute-long conversations of parents and children, siblings, friends, and every other possible combination of people on every possible topic. I’ve heard people talk about a teacher who helped them, a father they didn’t get along with, the person who saved their life, diving into freezing water to rescue them as a baby, and the parole officer who sent them back to prison. They talk about their jobs, their childhoods, the Holocaust, the Depression, the World Trade Center, their college days, and everything else under the sun. The most recent one I heard was about two people who met and fell in love at a nudist colony.
NPR plays snippets of them on Morning Edition every Friday. Listening to them invariably makes me laugh. Or cry. Or both. The full conversations are archived in the Library of Congress and at the StoryCorps website, where you can listen to them.
Just before we left for the Lectureship, Betty called and said the StoryCorps van was in Portales for a month and asked me if I’d be willing to record a conversation with her about Jack. I jumped at the chance. I loved Jack Williamson, and the chance to help preserve the memory of his importance as a writer and his intelligence and kindness as a human being was irresistible, and we had a wonderful conversation about him, discussing the man she knew as Uncle Jack and the man I knew as a science fiction giant and founder of the field–and as a friend.
When Betty called, she mentioned StoryCorps was having trouble finding volunteers, so I asked her to reserve the next slot for me, my husband, and our daughter, so we could talk about our trips to the total solar eclipse in 1979 and the one last year and how much they meant to us.sildenafil tablet viagra Cosmic Health has got highest awards on shows in Brussels (1999), Moscow (2001) and Parish (2000). If you cialis india discount take it personally, then you can contact your doctor. They already had developed tolerance to free samples levitra alcohol that they can’t dare miss even a single shot. A new study suggests overall assessment of an impotent cialis online mastercard man.
Our conversations will be archived at the Library of Congress and at the StoryCorps website. I just checked, and they’re not up yet, but you’ll eventually be able to listen to the interviews here:
And if a StoryCorps van comes to your area, I encourage you to sign up. You can talk about anything you want to–your love of books or science fiction, a person who made a difference in your life, or your hobby. Or you can reminisce with a friend or a sibling or an old roommate. It’s a wonderful experience, and a chance to be an active part of history.
Connie Willis