Month: April 2011

Lazy Days of Summer

/ Ann Aubrey Hanson / Leave a comment

Today’s memoir writing class focused on life before electronics, before we spent our evenings posted in front of the television set or game consoles. What did we DO before electronics? What were our summers like?

I had an unusual childhood, in that I never really watched television until 1965, having lived in France prior to that. My childhood evenings were spent playing games with my brothers, listening to classical music or show tunes on my parents’ “hi fi” stereo console, or reading. How we read! And that’s only after I was forced to come inside. I much preferred to be outside at the playground, riding my bike, rollerskating, or playing baseball or games of pretend with my friends.

Today we recalled what it was like to drift through the lazy days of summer. In my childhood, we’d get up early on a summer morning, shovel some cereal into our mouths, and take off for the unfenced outdoors, where groups of kids congealed and then launched into play for the day. At some point in the midday, we’d break off our games, holler to each other to “be back in 15” and dash off to get lunch, each at our separate homes, since we were typically too big a group to eat at one house. Then, it would be more play until dinner time, half an hour for dinner, and then back outside until it got too dark to see. On special nights, we were allowed to stay out after dark. That’s when the real fun began, especially Hide and Seek. Who can forget the primal fear of being hunted in the dark, and then dashing madly for the “base,” typically somewhere in a circle of light. Tag! No, free! I tagged you! Did not! FREE!

Our days were unscheduled, except for baseball or softball practice or games. There were no camps for us, no schedules to meet. We were told to stay out of trouble (which we managed to do for the most part) and set free. No one was bored. In fact, for me, there never seemed to be enough time to do everything I wanted to do. Well, pick-up baseball games could last an entire day, for one thing, and some of our world series lasted for a week or so.

For me, visions of heaven include the smell of freshly mowed lawns and summer evening barbecues. Images of heaven include my bare feet stained green by those mowed lawns, and my Dad standing at the barbecue, flipping burgers and hot dogs, Mom sitting nearby, relieved of kitchen duty and enjoying the company of Dad and friends. The best of times included evenings when our friends would come to eat and we’d stay in the backyard after dark. A community in the summer heat. Heaven.

What will my children remember of summer? I very much doubt that they’ll have the same sense of freedom, or of time standing still, of long, endless days of summer. In their lifetimes, summer was abridged to seven or eight weeks, not the three months we enjoyed. (And that was only because we didn’t make them go to summer school or camps, as some parents did.) As a consequence, I think the summers felt rushed. I wish I could have given them my summers, my moments of heaven. Perhaps they had their own moments. I’ll have to ask them.

Write Your Memoirs, At Least A Few

/ Ann Aubrey Hanson / Leave a comment

I continue to teach my Memoir Writing Workshops in San Diego, and each week I am struck anew by how important it is for each of us to write our memoirs. It doesn’t matter whether we write to publish, but we should write not to perish.

Our stories can be the greatest legacy we give to our children, or to those who come after us. No two people have the same story; it’s simply impossible. Each of us has been dropped into the river of time, within a family, within a legacy already written. We each then go on to form our own legacies, and that is the gift that we can give to others.

I am as guilty as most people who think, who cares? My kids won’t be interested. I’ll just be writing for myself. But when I listen to the stories in my classes, I realize the treasure being conveyed. Stories about the author, about the family that came before and the family that they joined. If not now, then later, these stories will be valued beyond the writer’s greatest expectations, because they will be a piece of the writer, a touch with what has passed.

My class members write about their first encounter with spouses, about moments of great childhood pain that imprinted the adult, and about people in the family long gone, bringing them, if only briefly, back into the flow of time, remembering that they existed and mattered for one moment. What more can any of us ask?

Take the time, as I vow to do, to write about your life. You don’t have to write chronologically. Just jump into a moment in your life and write. Whatever you put to “paper,” your family will enjoy. And if you never share it, at least you will relive the memory and the moment. You don’t have to write about the dark times, not if it’s still too painful. Write, instead, about a childhood triumph, even if it’s one only you know about or might remember. Or write about a fear that haunted, but was then overcome. Or about that game where you made the difference. This can be cathartic, but it can also be invigorating. Remember the you you used to be? Reclaim yourself, as you remember yourself. And live the you you once knew. I dare you!

Chinese Everything: The Yongle Encyclopedia

/ Ann Aubrey Hanson / 1 Comment

In my editing of a volume about lexicography this week, I came across a reference to a Chinese encyclopedia written in 1408. This was a handwritten encyclopedia of all Chinese knowledge at the time.

Called the Yongle Dadian (Great Canon of the Yongle Era), it comprised no fewer than 370 million Chinese characters and 22,937 manuscript rolls, bound in 11,095 volumes. Remember, handwritten.

The Canon covered history, philosophy, Buddhism, Taoism, drama, arts and farming, and many other topics, including unusual natural events. The content, which was partially transcribed character by character as exact copies of original texts produced during the previous decades, is structured according to a rhyming system for the characters and is also accessible through a complex system of indexes which, together with the preface, comprise 60 chapters in and of themselves. The idea was to make a complete canon of existing texts within a wide range of subject matter at a critical historical moment, when China was recovering from several devastating conflicts and needed this knowledge.

Some two thousand scholars worked on the volumes during the reign of the Yongle Emperor, incorporating eight thousand texts from ancient times up to the Ming Dynasty.

Because of the vastness of the work, it couldn’t be block-printed, and it is believed that only one copy of the volume was made at the time. A third copy was ordered transcribed after a fire burned the Forbidden City. Today, only 400 volumes survive. The original has disappeared, either burned, or destroyed, or perhaps buried in the tomb of the emperor Jiajing, who had ordered the second copy made.

Today, the most complete of the surviving Ming volumes are housed in the National Library of China in Beijing. Private collections house other pieces of the work.

I can’t help but imagine the treasure lost to mankind with the disappearance of the original manuscripts, as works of art, a collection of knowledge, and a trove of Chinese thought and history. Along with the volumes lost from the library at Alexandria, perhaps one day these volumes will be unearthed and finally brought to light again. One can dream.

Periodic Table of Storytelling

/ Ann Aubrey Hanson / Leave a comment

This is one of the reasons I avoid trolling the internet when I have work to do. I’m liable to find delightful time-wasters like this.

The final project of Computer Sherpa for a Visual Design class, this Periodic Table of Storytelling is endlessly intriguing and enlightening.

The table can be found here, with working links and an explanation: http://computersherpa.deviantart.com/art/Periodic-Table-of-Storytelling-203548951 .

It looks like the Periodic Table of Elements that we each encountered at least once in school, but instead of basic elements of matter, these are basic elements of storytelling. Click on any element to see the name of that aspect of storytelling. For example, click SUS in the rightmost column, and you’ll find: Willing Suspension of Disbelief. Then, go to tvtropes.org to read more about that basic element.

Warning, once you start, you’ll find it’s hard to stop. TVTropes.org has done a fantastic job of defining and illustrating these storytelling concepts. You’ll look up and realize you’ve been lost in Wonderland for hours!

Enjoy, and drop the creators a line to let them know you’ve visited. They’ll appreciate it, I’m sure.

Him Equals Whom

/ Ann Aubrey Hanson / 2 Comments

Today, I’m going to plagiarize. Well, actually, not really. I’m going to pay homage to the woman who originally wrote most of this text (Mignon Fogarty), and then repeat what she wrote. This has to do with the subject of “who vs. whom.”

As I edit books, I am continually confronted with this issue, and lord knows that we hear the rules broken every day. But who among us knows the rule? Mignon Fogarty does. And she explains it very well. As for me, I will never doubt what I know again. She has given me solid grounding in the rule and I’ll never forget it.

Taken from her website, Grammar Girl, http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/who-versus-whom.aspx, this is what she writes:

“First, to know whether to use who or whom, we need to talk about the difference between subjects and objects because you use who when you are referring to the subject of a clause and whom when you are referring to the object of a clause.” Don’t panic. She doesn’t leave us in the lurch with that statement, but goes on to clarify:

“If we think about people, the subject of the sentence is the person doing something, and the object of the sentence is having something done to them.” Subjects do, objects have done to them.

For example, “If I step on Squiggly, then I am the subject [doing the stepping] and Squiggly is the object [being stepped upon by me].”

Still clear as mud? Well she goes on to clarify still further: “Here’s my favorite mnemonic: If I say, ‘I love you,’ you are the object of my affection, and you is the object of the sentence [I am doing (loving) something to you]. I love you. You are the object of my affection and my sentence. It’s like a Valentine’s Day card and grammar mnemonic all rolled into one.”

Finally, Mignon gives a “Quick and Dirty Tip”:

“Like whom, the pronoun him ends with m. When you’re trying to decide whether to use who or whom, ask yourself if the answer to the question would be he or him. That’s the trick: if you can answer the question being asked with him, then use whom, and it’s easy to remember because they both end with m. For example, if you’re trying to ask, ‘Who (or whom) do you love?’ the answer would be, ‘I love him.’ Him ends with an m, so you know to use whom [in the question]. But if you’re trying to ask, ‘Who (whom) stepped on Squiggly?’ the answer would be, ‘He stepped on Squiggly.’ There’s no m, so you know to use who.

“Just remember, him equals whom.”

In an Elevator

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So the question is, who is the last person on earth that I would want to be stuck with in an elevator, and why?

While several specific people come to mind,  she of the bathing suit at the Y, for one, I will instead write about a type of person, rather than a specific one.

I would abhor being stuck in an elevator with someone who doesn’t read. Not quite as bad, but still bad, is someone who only reads self-help books. But mostly, I would find it difficult to spend time with anyone who doesn’t read to expand their horizons.

I know that there are those people who don’t read fiction, not wanting to waste their time on anything that “isn’t real,” while there are others who read only fiction, not wanting to waste their time on biographies or history. But give me a person who reads, and I’m sure to find something to talk about with that person. Even if it isn’t something about which I am particularly interested, I know I will learn something in the time we speak. Recently, at jury duty, I made a point to try to meet the other eleven people in the jury. I spoke with a recent college graduate who answered my queries  shyly at first, and then with greater animation, as he told me of his desire to go into speech therapy analysis and the reading he has been doing on the subject; an older gentleman who had been with the CIA before becoming a master chef in New York, before becoming a dealer in fine jewels, selling to the original founders of the great jewelry stores such as Tiffany’s; a woman who is a “WWII orphan,” one among several hundred thousand of such children who lost their fathers in the Second World War, and who now writes about the research being done to link these orphans with the stories of their fathers’ war experiences; and  a man whose hero was Sandy Koufax, and who knew every detail about Koufax’s life; and several others.

The point is, I found something to speak about with each of these people because they  were interested in life beyond their own noses, and each turned out to be a voracious reader. Once we found we had that in common, the rest was a walk in the park. They knew about the world beyond their limited experience and they sought to know more through books.

I have neighbors who do not read. While they are nice people, I find I have little to speak about with them. They have opinions set in stone, circumscribed views on the world around them, and no interest in the lives of others who differ from them. They are like a cousin of mine who proudly declares, “Europe has nothing to offer me. Why would I ever travel there?”