From the OHC Director — May 2020
I’m not the only one who has noticed that days seem to have become indistinguishable from one another — that the everyday cycles of life have become something of a blur. Thankfully there are still reminders of change and growth. At my home in Sonoma County, where I’ve been doing my SIP, we had a peek at summer last week when temperatures jumped unto the upper 80s and where, in my garage, my very first brood of chicks is quickly becoming a gang of unruly teenagers. And while our campus remains closed, another school year is just about wrapped up and with it (remote) celebrations for our graduating seniors. In recent years, we’ve worked with an increasing number of undergrads as employees and as apprentices and this year we commend and congratulate these Golden Bears for their contributions to our campus and achievements in the classroom: Gurshaant Bassi, Emily Keats, Nidah Khalid, Emily Lempko, Devin Lizardi, JD Mireles, Kendall Stevens, and Calvin Tang.
Last month in the April newsletter, I wrote about how the Center’s staff was working to bring our usual face-to-face operations into the Zoom Age by exploring the viability of high-quality online interviewing. Our working group, consisting of Paul Burnett, David Dunham, and Roger Eardley-Pryor, has devoted many hours to considering the possibilities and testing the options. I’m very pleased to report that they have developed a menu of workable options that accommodate the varying technological capabilities of our diverse set of narrators, as well as should meet the high expectations of our partners. I’m also very happy to report that at least one of our partner organizations has agreed to sponsor an online life history interview with a key individual in their organization’s history. As the OHC working group tests and fine-tunes their methods, they are documenting the specific processes and writing instructions. Once we’re confident that we’ve found the best possible process (given our uncertain and changing circumstances) we will happily share this with the oral history community. More than anything, we want to continue to do the important work of documenting lives and recording stories so that vital first person accounts of these remarkable and trying times are not lost to history — and we want you to be able to continue this work too!
Speaking of retrofitting for the ‘new normal,’ we are bringing other initiatives online too. Our Summer Institute this year is going virtual, for one. Registration is now open and keep in touch for more information on how the 2020 Institute is going to be run. Moreover, the May newsletter is usually our opportunity to celebrate and express our gratitude for those we interviewed during the previous year. Every April for the past six years, we’ve hosted an “Oral History Commencement,” that brought these folks together for a joyous event on the Berkeley campus. Alas, we’ve had to cancel the event for 2020 but still want to pay due attention to our narrators from the Oral History Class of 2020! Please come back next month for our virtual celebration of those who contributed their time and stories to the ever-growing Oral History Center collection.
Martin Meeker, Charles B. Faulhaber Director