Blog

11
Jan

Family Photos Can Capture a Slice of Life and Honor Family History

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I’ve been scanning old family photos and slides for several years now; this one stands out to me for obvious reasons. The less obvious reasons are subtle and special. As a child of the 1960s, I remember all the local businesses being run by WWII vets, most still in good shape. This photo, from a […]

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10
Jan

Remembering Family Adventures in Africa

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In 1974 my father, a professor of British and African History, took a sabbatical year to do research in Kenya and teach aboard “World Campus Afloat,” an earlier version of Semester at Sea. He took my mother and young brothers along for the adventures. Here they sit in the Nairobi train station, waiting in the […]

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02
Jan

Kodachrome Slides Reveal my Grandparents’ Adventurous Lives

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This is an old 35mm Kodachrome of my Grandfather and Grandmother standing next to their plane and Inuit family in the Nunavut territory of Canada during the early 1950s. Both my grandparents supplied medical aid for polio and tuberculosis to the Eskimo people during the harsh winters. My grandfather was an accomplished physician and pilot; […]

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01
Jan

If you don’t know the past, you can’t understand the present

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“If you don’t know the past, you can’t understand the present.” -Chaim Potok On New Year’s day, my family remembers the birthday of Ruth Appel Wittmayer. She was delivered at 12:01 am on January 1, 1929, the first baby born in Brooklyn that year, as reported in the local newspapers. She would have been 87 […]

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21
Dec

When We Discover Family Photos, We Discover Ourselves

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“Family faces are magic mirrors. Looking at people who belong to us, we see the past, present and future. We make discoveries about ourselves.” -Gail Lumet Buckley My grandmother, as a child at her home in Philadelphia. She was sick and a family friend came over to make portraits. For someone who grew up in […]

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