Stefani Twyford's Page
This movie trailer for one of our recent clients. The full movie won a 2009 Videographer Award of Distinction in the Tribute Video Category.
Stefani Twyford's Blog
Memory and Craft
Posted on October 13, 2009 at 10:40am —
Legacy Lists – Organizing The Family Information
Posted on October 11, 2009 at 1:21pm —
Create Your Own Family Bible
Posted on September 26, 2009 at 2:56pm —
Little green Blog - TreeRing Preserving memories of childhood and our future earth
Little green Blog - TreeRing Preserving memories of childhood and our future earth
Posted on September 23, 2009 at 10:35am —
The Objects and Memory Project
"The documentary film and educational initiative Objects and Memory is about how we respond to history while it is happening and how we tell our stories through the otherwise ordinary things in our homes and museums that are associated with people, places, and events.
The film was the PBS national prime time special in commemoration of the seventh anniversary of 9/11. With narrati… Continue
Posted on September 12, 2009 at 4:29pm —
© 2009 Created by Martin D. Diano
Comment Wall (22 comments)
You need to be a member of Boomer Authority™ to add comments!
Join this Ning Network
Another annual tradition is me writing a blog, a newsletter article or speaking publicly about how important it is to take advantage of the fact that friends and family are together and you have the perfect opportunity to work on your family history now!
Believe me, I understand how easy it is to get swept up in the shopping, and cooking and celebrating. Taking time to actually create opportunities for family members to talk about their past or their futures takes a bit of planning. But honestly, it’s not that much work and there’s so many great things that you can do.
1. My favorite thing is to get kids involved in documenting family history. Buy a bunch of disposable cameras and give each child (obviously not the very young ones) a camera and a pad of paper and pen, and assign them a relative to photograph and interview. Perhaps mention something they may have in common with that relative. If your son is into football and your grandfather was the high school quarterback, let your son ask him questions about his sports career and how that shaped his life. You may need to coach each kid and give them some specific questions to ask their assigned interviewee but I guarantee you that by the time they are done, each will know and understand the other a bit better.
Read the complete story here
The Top Five Personal History Blogs for 2009. « Dan Curtis ~ Professional Personal Historian
While it’s always great to get PR, I particularly like this article because I felt that writer Pam Vetter asked the right questions and framed all the responses into a context that really gets to the essence of what it is that we do.
Because the process of creating a video biography or personal history is so detailed, it’s difficult to communicate in an elevator speech (that is how much information you can communicate to someone while an elevator goes up one or two floors and is a standard of networking and promotional coaching.) Traditional advertising usually fails for us because how do you communicate everything we do and the experience of working on a family history in a 3×5″ space? When I am being glib, I will say that what we do is make people cry. There is some truth to this. The experience of seeing your family or a family member honored and their stories told can be deeply moving. I have even heard from a couple of readers that this American Chronicle article had them in tears. This is great to hear since it shows me and Pam that we really communicated the emotion of how we help people.
Complete blog article continued here...
The annual tradition of the holiday letter is a great way to keep in touch with our far-flung loved ones; an opportunity to update friends and family on career changes, family news and other achievements of the past year. Often it’s the only communication we have with some of our friends. Traditionally, these letters have earned the reputation as a vehicle for self-aggrandizement. Braging about the clever things our kids have done or a laundry list of vacations and fabulous social occasions we’ve participated in. So much so that there has been a recent backlash to this annual ‘fake autobiography’ with people chronicling the intimate and often sobering details of their lives in much the same way reality TV profiles modern America. I’m not an advocate of these ‘tell all’ letters but I do think that these letters can be a rich opportunity to share who you are and some of your own history with others.
For some new ideas on the age-old letter, look to the internet. There are some great websites that give you advice, templates and artwork to use in your annual letter. Christmas Letter Tips is one such site. Consider allowing your children to write the letter. They provide a different perspective and are often good at getting right at the heart of what they want to recognize and acknowledge about the previous year. Several years ago, I wrote a holiday letter from the perspective of our family dog. He shared what it was like living in our house and what he dreamt about at night. It was a huge hit and I got comments back for years from people who got a kick out of reading it. We even received a few responses from other friends’ dogs.
You might consider using this opportunity to pen a remembrance of something that happened in your own life. A story that allowed you the opportunity to learn or grow, or an experience with a beloved family member. Many of these stories haven’t been shared.
View All Comments