by Pam Pacelli Cooper, Verissima Productions Memories of July 4th, 2020: Masked and cautious, we went to our local supermarket to buy corn for two, a small package of hamburger, and pre-sliced watermelon. In three different houses across town, the friends we had joined for years in a celebration of the “glorious Fourth “did much[Read More]
Blog Posts
Memory and Place: Your Childhood Geography Map
How often do we think about where we grew up and the geography of our neighborhoods? Do we consider how much geography shaped our family history narrative? Recently, I took some time to think about those questions and to reflect upon my childhood geography map. My Childhood Geography I was looking at a picture of[Read More]
Creating an Archive of Your Family’s Voting History
by Pam Pacelli Cooper October is American Archives Month. As the leaves fall and we turn our energies indoors, we can begin to think about the archives in our own homes: troves of letters never read or catalogued; memories not yet recorded; years of photos cached in disorganized files on multiple computers, thrown into shoeboxes,[Read More]
As I Write This Letter*: An Homage to National Letter Writing Week
I received a number of annual letters from friends this year. This is not a type of letter I am good at writing, but I treasure it when other people can summarize their lives in one page, and I save their letters year to year. One friend has been sending her life summaries for 30[Read More]
Carrying Two Hundred Years of Memories: The Blessings of Longevity
by Pam Pacelli Cooper President, Verissima Productions I was born less than 70 years ago. What if I were to tell you that I carry with me memories that are 200 years old? Read on to find out how that became possible. Two weeks ago, I responded to Amy Johnson Crow’s challenge to write about[Read More]
A Challenge for the New Year: 52 Weeks, 52 Ancestors
by Pam Pacelli Cooper President, Verissima Productions Happy New Year All! May 2018 be the year you “Save Lives”. As a personal historian, I’ve been encouraging people to save their stories for over 20 years, but I recently realized I haven’t been so good at saving my own. This year, I decided to take genealogist[Read More]
A Simple Kindness That Saves Lives
by Pam Pacelli Cooper President, Verissima Productions I’ve been wracking my brain for the last few weeks, trying to think about what to write for my December blog. There are thousands of excellent blogs about gift giving and personal history including more “Listicles” than I can count. I don’t have any better ideas that those[Read More]
Turn, Turn, Turn
It seems our world has been turning faster than usual these past few months. On the world stage, events of huge magnitude—the melting of the Western Antarctic ice, the decision of Britain to leave the European union, the enormous migration of displaced persons from Syria and other countries—plus the 24-hour news cycle have made staying “informed” and keeping connected seem more difficult than ever.
Gabe’s: A Story of Mystery and Possibility
by Pam Pacelli Cooper President, Verissima Productions Incorporated It was a small haberdashery store in Hyde Park, nestled in the shopping center where everyone in our small community shopped for groceries, went to the Optometrist and filled their prescriptions at the drugstore. I did the same, walking the several blocks from our house to help[Read More]
The Secret of the Silver Cup: Opening the Door to Personal History
By Pam Pacelli Cooper President, Verissima Productions The ornate silver cup had been given to my husband at his birth, inscribed with his name and birthdate. When our child was born, the same cup was inscribed again with the name and birthdate of our son. We had always been puzzled by the original inscription on[Read More]
