• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to footer

Verissima Productions

Massachusetts Videographers, Artists & Designers

  • Home
  • About
  • Services
    • Personal Histories: Videos
    • Business Histories
    • Organizations
    • You Can Take It With You:
      Histories of Places & Things
    • Broadcast & Educational
    • Legacy Conversations
    • Personal Histories: Books
  • Process
  • Newsletter & Blog
    • Newsletter
    • Life Preservers Blog
    • Life Preservers Podcast
  • Subscribe
  • Reviews
  • Contact

Personal History

History Finds A New Home: The Journey of the Plastic Bins

September 14, 2016

By Pam Pacelli Cooper President, Verissima Productions My mother lives in a small, one bedroom apartment on Chicago’s North Side. The one big thing about the apartment is the closets. There are three large ones, and they would be the envy of anyone in the Northeast who lives in a 19th century house designed for wardrobes.[Read More]

Brilling and Bedazzled: Creating New Words

July 24, 2016

By Pam Pacelli Cooper President, Verissima Productions My family of origin adores words. We did crossword puzzles, word games, Boggle and Scrabble when I was growing up. I was lucky enough to meet and marry someone who is also a lexophile. What his family doesn’t do is create words to capture a feeling, an object, or a process[Read More]

Life Preservers Podcast–Episode 3: An Interview with Francie King

June 8, 2016

A responsibility not “accepted blithely.” Join us as Francie King of History Keep describes her work with personal history clients, drawing on her years of journalism experience. You’ll also encounter treasured letters, Revolutionary War re-enactors, and a magnificent mother as we enter Part 3 of our journey to find the personal stories of personal historians.[Read More]

How We Tell Our Stories

June 1, 2016

By Pam Pacelli Cooper President, Verissima Productions   We tell stories with video and audio. In the personal histories we create we hope to capture the successes and happy moments, but also the moments of pain, mistakes, and repair. If future generations see only the “great” moments of their grandparents’ lives, they may be cowed and dispirited, rather[Read More]

Personal History and Making Choices - Part 3 by Pam Pacelli Cooper Our first two blogs about making choices in personal history dealt with awareness and contemplation from: “What is personal history? Never heard of it, “ to “ This sounds interesting, but I want to think more about it.” Ok, now, you've made it through those first two phases and your relative or your personal history client has thought about it and says they're ready to move forward. Ready to start talking or taping, right? Not quite. The next step is huge. The decision has been made to go ahead, but the decision about HOW to proceed has not. As someone who has painted a lot of rooms, I can say that I dislike the spackling and the sanding—I’d rather put the beautiful colors on the wall NOW—but having tried that a few times and ended up with a bumpy, uneven mess, I’ve learned the importance of preparation. If you want want a high-quality personal history, there’s a lot of “spackling” involved. How can you help in this stage? 1. Identify supports and obstacles to creating the project. Brainstorm about how to amortize the supports and overcome the obstacles. 2. Create a map: There are many ways to do this, but your map must have a beginning, signposts along the way, and a destination ( the final product). 3. Keep the larger purpose in mind: Why are you doing this, and for whom? If things get dicey or stall, visualize the faces of your great grandchildren as they learn about their family, or imagine an historian coming across the World War II letters from your grandfather that you’ve donated to the local historical society. You’ve made the decision, you’ve got the vision, you’ve made a map. NOW you are ready to take action! This is the stage most of us are familiar with. It involves setting the steps of our carefully laid plan into motion and adjusting as we need to, always keeping the end in mind. What has your experience been with these three phases? How did you help move someone through the first two stages to the third stage of being ready for the project? Do you have a system for creating a personal history map that's worked well for you? Share your experiences in the comments section!

Personal History & Making Choices – Part 3

May 25, 2016

Life Preservers Podcast – Episode 2: An interview with Leah Abrahams

May 11, 2016

What do Georges Briard, Gertrude Stein, and a Lutheran fraternal organization have in common? Find out when you listen to our interview with Leah Broyde Abrahams, personal historian. As a subject in our series on getting to know personal historians, Leah describes the path she took to become one, what she has learned, and some insights on why creating[Read More]

Making Choices in Personal History Part 2: Contemplation How do you decide to embark on a personal history? In our last blog, we began to explore the stages of decision-making, based on the work of James Prochaska and his colleagues in their ground-breaking research on lasting change and how it happens. Today, we’re going to discuss the second stage of change. Contemplation: “Hmmmm…” In pre-contemplation, we introduced the idea of presenting information that was previously unknown: that there is such a thing as a personal history and that it will have lasting value in the lives of individuals, families, and communities. This is the “awareness” stage, a move from ignorance to knowledge. We encouraged the “educator,” to share information freely and then step back to allow it to percolate, rather than trying to rush decision-making and action. Now suppose you haven’t talked with them for a couple of months. It’s perfectly fine to check in and ask them and ask if they’ve thought any more about it (being aware of the personality of the person you’re contacting). At this point, if they say either, “I’m thinking about what it might mean to do something like this, but I need to take some more time to make any decision, or, “I hadn’t thought about it but, now that you remind me, I’d like to think further about this. “This is the signal that he/she is in the “Contemplation” stage. What are the indicators: 1. Consideration of the possibilities without any action steps being involved; Their Sitting on a fence where previously no fence existed; 2. No immediate time frame being discussed. ‘I’m aware that this is something that has benefited others and might be of benefit to me, but I’m not ready to jump in just yet.” How can you be helpful in this stage? 1. Validate their decision-making process: “I understand that you want to think about this some more. That’s great. It’s a big step. You want to make sure that if you do this, it feels solid. “ 2. Clarify and discuss: Help them understand the pros and cons of doing a personal history (e.g., the pro of having something for my siblings, great grandchildren, community; the con of how much it would cost, the time it would take, I don’t feel like I’d have anything to say, etc.) 3. Illustrate the value of contemplation: Just carefully weighing the options will deepen their understanding of their process and help them achieve resolution.

Personal History & Making Choices – Part 2

April 27, 2016

1) name the steps in the change process; 2) relate them to the stages people go through in deciding to preserve life stories; and 3) give hints about how to recognize and work through each stage. Stage One: Pre-Contemplation…”What Are You Talking About?” Our culture is awash in storytelling and life preservation, from Story Corps -- to the Humans of New York Facebook page -- to the huge Roots Tech genealogy convention. Yet when someone’s son says, “Maybe we ought to tell the story of our family?” or a member of the local historical society says, “Maybe we ought to digitize those oral histories that are stored on crumbling paper in the back room…” a person may often say, “Our story is not very interesting,” or “We don’t have the money to digitize those records,” or “I don’t have the time.” This is what is called the Pre-Contemplation Stage. In the Pre-Contemplation Stage everyone can see that there is a need but the person with the need can’t see it, or doesn’t think it applies to them. How do you help people move out of this stage? Raise Consciousness, Educate, Inform! Since you are reading this blog, you are most likely not in pre-contemplation, but you probably know someone who is -- a family member, a business associate, a friend, maybe even the Board member of your local historical society. Here are some steps you can take to raise awareness DO: 1. Cite facts: List the variety of benefits derived from preserving their life histories. (Most people in pre-contemplation have never even considered them as personally relevant.) 2. Share the positive changes that came into your own life as a result of creating a personal history. You can also listen to our current podcast to hear how one Personal Historian’s life changed as a result of her family journey. …or watch an episode of Henry Louis Gates’ show, “Finding Your Roots.” 3. Point out some of the consequences of failing to preserve lives, e.g., “I wish I knew what mom thought about my dad’s years in the CIA,” or “I’ll never be able to find out more about mom’s time as a missionary in Laos,” or “I think those are my great uncles, but grandma is dead and there’s no legend on the back of the photo.” DON’T 1. …try to move the person along too fast. You are not trying to get the person to act at this stage—they are not ready-- you are helping to raise their awareness. 2. …be discouraged if it takes a while…even if you feel an urgency, the desire to proceed needs to come from within. If it doesn’t it won’t sustain and the project will never start or it will feel like it’s your project, instead of theirs. Are you a professional personal historian? This may help you understand why we often experience such long lead times between the first contact and the initiation of a project. Do you know someone who would benefit from doing a Personal History? Learning the stages involved in choosing and changing may provide insight into the complexity of the process. Look around you this week. How many people do you see who are still in the pre-contemplation stage of doing a personal history? Please share what you discover with us. Next Week: Stage 2: Contemplation: “Hmmm….”

Making Choices & Personal History

April 13, 2016

CLICK to hear Episode 1

Life Preservers Podcast: Episode 1 – An Interview with Marcia Orland

April 13, 2016

Welcome to  the first episode of our new podcast! Each episode of Life Preservers: A Personal History Podcast  will feature interviews designed to help you think about personal history–what it is, how to do it, why to do it, and how personal histories create a correspondence with the future. In addition to the interviews, we’ll point[Read More]

What’s the story?

November 5, 2015

« Previous Page
Next Page »

Footer

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Vimeo

Verissima Productions

(617) 629-5999
info@verissima.com

Subscribe to Our Monthly Newsletter

Copyright © 2020 Verissima Productions

Join Our Mailing List