I am composing an oral history of our times and I need your help. I would like to collect commentary, stories, opinions and information surrounding your lives and how they are affected by the current times. This is your chance to be a part of true history, a story told by you, not publishers and historians. The real deal.
I have no political motive; I only want to hear from you. Your story, our story.
I would like to capture information from all walks of life. Different ages, races, economic backgrounds, professions, anyone and everyone. Due to the state of my current financial situation, I cannot afford to travel the United States to speak to people in person which is why I chose this forum to gather my data so that responses are not limited to my own geographic area. With that being said, I understand that this forum does limit me to those who have internet access and are literate/computer literate. I would be appreciative of anyone who would like to record the thoughts of those who cannot participate via email, but would still like to contribute to the project. This is your chance to be a story teller for yourself or someone else.
I will be organizing your stories and commentary into an oral history book to be shared with our generation and those of the future so they may learn our story. I plan to publish this work with my own commentary to be sold. If you choose to submit your story, please note that you will donating your story to this project, you will receive no proceeds, royalties, or compensation of any kind from funds gained through publication of this work. Your submission to the project is your release of your comments to be published. This is your chance to contribute and be heard.
Our nation is facing a great time of change. There are different opinions of what is happening. Are we in a recession, depression, crisis, down turn? So I feel this is as good a time as any to take the pulse of the people. I will be organizing the book into chapters by topic so I’m providing some guideline questions to keep on track. You may provide other commentary which may or may not be used. I will not change anyone’s written word but I will editorialize by selecting which items to include and those that will be cut. I would like to keep the language as clean as possible. Feel free to express yourself any way you chose, but note that it may have an effect on my decision of whether or not to use your commentary. Please provide your contact info so that I may follow up with you if needed for further comment or special emphasis on your story.
How to submit: Send an email with your information in the below outlined format to breadandbutternationATgmail.com. To reduce spam emails, I have published the email address with AT rather than the @ symbol. Please make the appropriate replacement when addressing your email.
Format:
First name (pseudonym you would like used if you do not want your first name published)
Age
Occupation
Race
City & State
Contact info (email or phone or both - contact info will not be published)
Answer one or all of the questions, your choice:
1. Talk about how your life has changed since our economy has slowed.
2. Talk about your hopes or fears for the future and how you feel the economy may change your future.
3. Talk about what you feel our nation is facing financially and what it means to you.
4. Have you been through a tough economic time before? 30’s Depression, Recession? Talk about, how are things different today? How does this make you feel towards today’s situation?
5. Talk about what you feel caused the current economic situation.
6. Talk about how you feel about George Bush or Barack Obama as it relates to our economic situation.
7. Talk about what you do, your industry and how you feel about your job and the current economic situation. Company names will be omitted.
8. Are you a business owner? Talk about your business and how you feel about the economic situation as it relates to your business. Company names will be omitted.
9. Are you a student? Talk about your career outlook upon graduation and how you feel about your future.
10. Tell a story about something that has happened to you as a result of the current economy.
11. Quote yourself. Would you like a quote to appear by your commentary? This may be a comment on the world, the economy or something that defines you and your ethics.
12. Any other commentary you would like to add.
I would like to make some dedications for this project. First to Studs Terkel, I personally consider him the father of the oral history and I am grateful to him for his works and contributions. I would next like to dedicate this project to all of you who make the decision to donate your story to this work. Your donation to the project is a selfless act that I hope will bring understanding of our generation to those of the future. Lastly I would like to dedicate the project to my husband, family and friends who were supportive when I told them about starting my project.
Please feel free to distribute this blog address and spread the word. My hope is that this reaches people from all over the United States and even the World. I would like to create a large enough sample of backgrounds and geographical areas to make this project a success. I will accept commentary from those in other countries as well as I feel their opinion of our Nation is important as well, but the focus of this work will be the people of the United States. Teachers, if you would like to use this project as an assignment for your class, I will consider a chapter dedication to students and their commentary. Young and fresh opinions are very welcome. Again they are to be reminded this is a donation of their commentary and compensation will not be received.
Thank you in advance for your thoughts and contribution. Comments to this blog will be moderated and published if appropriate. Feel free to contact me should you have any questions. Now, please tell your history.
