All posts by Ellouise Schoettler

Our Stories Are Our Lasting Legacy

December 12, 2013making a story, MemoirEllouise Schoettler

Note: When I embraced myself as a storyteller twenty-five years ago my subversive goal was to tell our family stories and have my children come to hear them. You see, when I began collecting our family history our kids waved me off when I spoke begat, begat, begat and then they died. “Boring, Mom.” and – they were right. But once I began to find and add stories and to work something in about today and the members of the family – well it all changed. Now my family not only listens to my stories – some times they pass the stories along.

Today I wrote this essay and posted it on Bethesda-Chevy Chase Patch.com and Ellouisestory.blogspot.com and here. Why? It is important to me. I feel like this message is my storyteller mission statement.

At last, The Atlantic Magazine has published an article I have been waiting for – for years.
THE IMPORTANCE OF TELLING FAMILY STORIES. Now maybe people will get it.

Thirty years ago when I began hunting up my family history genealogy I learned that there was no passing down just the begats – you have to have the stories or the flesh will not go back on the bones. And often times, the stories you want are already buried and you can’t get to them. The sad truth is that one death can close a family library of stories.

I realized I had to switch my tactics and create stories to go with the names and dates I had collected or they would rot in a box. I was desperate to tell the stories so I became a storyteller.

Now, you don’t have to go that far unless you have a yearning for standing in front of the room. But it is important to tell your family about you and your life and how you got to be who you are. Because who you are is part of who the younger ones in your family are and will be.

When I hit rough spots I am glad I have pieced together the stories of the women in my family because they are all survivors. They survived heartache, financial troubles, loss of children and husbands – young and old. One husband was shot in a senseless robbery and his wife went on to raise six children in a time where there were no pensions or workman’s comp – just hard work. I knew this valiant woman, my great aunt, who always stood tall and never lost her faith as she faced into the wind.

And then there are the stories shared around the table, mixed with laughter and love and memories of those who have gone. As well as telling of how things were 10, 20. 30 or more years ago so that our children today will understand us better when we wonder about technologies and lament the demise of the fountain pen or the silence of touch screens as we miss the clatter of typewriters which proved you were working.

Holidays are here. Families are gathering. This is a great time to tell some stories about you and your family. Our family is the most precious audience we have.

Wishing you a very blessed and storied holiday season.

The Memoir Urge

October 16, 2013making a story, Memoir, StoryEllouise Schoettler

The first time I wrote a personal story I was in the 7th grade when the teacher gave a class assignment to write about our family.

I wrote about my Daddy – a crazy, funny story about some of his eccentric antics. I read it to the class and when my classmates laughed uproariously I was hooked.

I have explored telling my story in many forms.

Collage is one – but before that – I worked on albums.

In the 1970s one of the new modes of expression for women artists was autobiograpy in an effort to validate the lifes of ordinary women. Artist Miriam Schapiro used handmade articles made by anonymous women in her art work and many other women artists included photographs, bits of biography and momentos. Once when Miriam was visiting DC, she and I made a field trip to Thieves Market, a huge flea market under a tin roof which was a bit south of Alexandria on Hwy 1. That afternoon Mimi introduced me to the beauty and charm of old scrap books as examples of anonymous women’s art work and I have been collecting them ever since. As well as making many of my own.

My first auto-biographical album was exhibited at the Washington Women’s Art Center in 1975. I used old and new family photographs to tell a story which connected similar images of the past and the present. Something I still do in my storytelling – and in writing this blog. Connecting the threads of the story, past and present, as a way of weaving my life together.

In 1994 when my father died, I made a biographical album for his life and housed it in an old leather salesman’s catalog notebook that he had used for years and given to me. My thought was – his life story within a bit of his life. The Album was exhibited at Gallery 10, Washington, DC in 1996 in Life After Life, an exhibition organized by artist Claudia Vess.

In 2003 Lucy Blankstein and I created videos from family photographs to tell a story from each of our families for Embedded Memories:Digital Recall, our two-person exhibition at Gallery 10, Washington, DC and at the DC Art-o-Matic. In Family Album,a video I made for that exhibition, I combine words and music with the photographs to remember my grandmother and my great-mother by using my mother’s words to tell a bit of their stories.

I hope you will leave a comment and share ways you are using to capture and preserve your family stories and — most importantly TELL them.

Food Prompts Memories That Can Lead to Stories

September 14, 2013making a story, Memoir, memories, StoryEllouise Schoettler

A dish of bright green asparagus is the spark for memories that could or will become a story. It is certainly a bit of memoir remembering putting me back in to several worlds.

I buy and cook asparagus often. Its easy, dresses up a meal and I love it.

I am so known to love asparagus, especially the slender, baby spears, that Jim’s mother used to stock the refrigerator with the bright green bundles and have it waiting for me on our visits to California. I have eaten it for breakfast, lunch and supper. Asparagus as a side with scrambled eggs – ambrosia.

Growing up Mama bought canned asparagus at the Big Star on Central Avenue when she wanted to dress up a special meal – you know, the fat, muddy green, soggy spears. She would put them on a platter with a huge dollop of creamy Duke’s mayonnaise – maybe some red tomato slices -as a side dish. Even then I liked them – mostly because they were supposed to be a special treat.

I don’t remember the exact time or place I discovered fresh cooked asparagus but after that moment there was no going back.

It might have been about the time I discovered that green beans did not have to be cooked with fat-back until they were black – although that is the way I like them best and will feast until I am full on the memories of my grandmother’s house on East Seventh Street.

Do you like the picture? Here is the recipe. Thanks to SimplyRecipes.com

Asparagus Recipe

Cook time: 10 minutes

Add to shopping list

Ingredients

1 bunch of medium sized asparagus, about 1 lb
2 Tbsp of the most exquisite extra virgin olive oil
2 Tbsp freshly grated Parmesan cheese
1 teaspoon lemon zest – freshly grated lemon rind
Salt and freshly ground black pepper

Method

1 Prepare the asparagus by rinsing them thoroughly, break off any tough, white bottoms and discard. Cut into 1 to 2 inch sections, slicing the asparagus at a slight diagonal.

2 Fill a medium sized saucepan half way with water, bring to a boil. Add the asparagus and reduce heat slightly to a simmer. Parboil the asparagus for exactly 2 minutes. Drain the hot water. While the asparagus are still hot, toss them in a bowl with the olive oil, Parmesan, and lemon rind. Salt and pepper to taste. Serve warm or room temperature.

Note that when you are working with so few ingredients, it’s important to make sure they are of the highest quality.

Yield: Serves 4.

Genealogy and my storytelling

September 13, 2013making a story, StorygenealogyEllouise Schoettler

My passion for storytelling is linked to my passion for genealogy. I find stories in genealogy.

Letters particularly bring anyone reading them close to those long ago and the letters tell stories.

Parks is one of my mother’s family lines. Did we know this? No. Did she know this? No to that too. Its amazing how the shade from your family tree begins to spread when you start tracing your families.

On one of my forays to the DAR Library looking for ancestors I found this letter from James Parks which says so much about how and why family history slips away.

More than 100 years ago on September 9, 1893 James Parks sat down to write this letter to his Granddaughter:
“My dear granddaughter,
You desire me to write out a history of our family, I regret that I know so little compared with perhaps what I might have learned from my grandfather. But the truth is that at the time when he was capable of affording me information, I was more interested in pocket knives, fish hooks, and pop guns than in family history, and when I arrived at an age when history of my family would have been more interesting, my Grandfather had fallen into a childish stage and was incapable of giving such information about anything of a worldly nature.”

What else is there to say. I am grateful for finding this letter – James Parks encourages me on. Letters put you close to the author and I felt I met him when I found this. We are not direct descendants of James Parks – but are collaterally related. Coming EARLY as Mama’s families did – the ties are tightly woven.

Attic Museums

September 12, 2013genealogy, Memoir, StoryEllouise Schoettler

I love “attic” museums.
Small places where they exhibit

the bits of peoples’ lives.
Where the obscure becomes important.
Some would say

“all they have is trash.”

Attics are where you find the bits of memories.
Where you stumble across the forgotten
Kept because it was precious.

Southerners have an affinity for holding on –

To things.
We want the bits of history

To tell us who our people were.
So we will know who we are.

We keep stuff – for generations.

A photograph, a piece of lace, a spoon,

Books, oh, my yes, books

Letters, pens, linens, pots and pans.

And on, and on, and on.

We guard them.

They are us.

Our roots, our connections.

How can you know yourself

Without your stuff?

That’s where the stories are.