On Tuesday afternoons half a dozen people meet in a comfortable setting, an art studio, community center, a library, or someone’s home. The elderly grandmother smiles, chuckling as she recounts familiar anecdotes from her past. Her daughter sits nearby, encouraging and guiding the telling past the usual tales. A family member or friend who hankers to write pens the narrative from the notes gathered, childhood memories, first job, first date, advice about marriage and parenting, and the little-spoken-of lessons learned. The project starts small, soil-building.
They talk about family heirlooms, fondly remembering the use of each item before the age of progress, when life was slower and perhaps less efficient, and extended families still lived close. A collection of pictures prompts stories of childhood homes and loved ones, who have almost slipped from mind, relationships that have gone by the wayside. Pictures are carefully inserted into book-art pockets or sewn into pages. Well-worn receipts and documents tuck in or are captured in the binding. Book art, documenting the past, the lives and loves, heartstring heroes, and broken hearts.
Eager hands fashion a bookshelf or cupboard to hold the memorabilia and hand-bound books. Some volumes burst at the seams with ephemera, tied with misty ribbons, carefully laid in handmade boxes with elaborate textured covers and velvet innards. Boxes of memories to be lovingly handled and cherished into the future.
Flutters, blinks, and sparkles, capturing the individual imaginations of those who are intrigued by the vision. One family is added to the bookshelf, then another. Slow learning, resurrecting families and communities from the ashes of a society torn apart.
Contact us to learn more about the Oak & Acorn Culture & Genealogy Project.
Cheers,
Gus