Old interviews

By cryptoref on Fri, 07/16/2021 - 10:42

Forums

I did an interview with my Grandmother when I was a teenager. Yep, no real record left of the actual interview, but the facts remain. Here is how I'm planning on sourcing and describing the situation. 

Near the end of her life Gertrude Sexton, Margaret Bible’s daughter, to satisfy a teenager’s budding interest in genealogy, granted some oral interviews with the author.[1] Unfortunately, due to bad record keeping as a teenager, the original notes are temporarily unavailable.[2]

[1]   Gertrude Sexton (San Diego, California), interviews by David Grawrock, 1968-1970; original notes lost.

[2]   The terminology matches the official correspondence to the author from the Immigration and Nationalization Service (INS) regarding the original documentation of his daughter’s adoption, those records have been temporarily unavailable for twenty-five years. Personally, lost is a better term, but maybe they will appear. The author assigns the same probability of the INS documents appearing as I do to the original interview notes.

Submitted byEEon Fri, 07/16/2021 - 20:21

That works, cryptoref. It states the facts and also provides the reader with a peek into the author's wry wit.

One point puzzles me. It's not clear from the snippet what "terminology" you are referencing.

Terminology of "temporarily unavailable". The INS couldn't say lost, they had to use a term that means the exact same thing :)

Can I quote you to my wife that I have a "wry wit" she somehow doesn't quite believe that (and I'm thankful she doesn't follow me on this forum I think I'm safe! )

Submitted bycryptorefon Sat, 07/17/2021 - 10:10

So if you were the editor of a journal and that footnote appears in an article for publication, edit it out or let it stay? It is my attempt at humor. When I wrote technical books my editor had me put some of the "wry wit" into the footnotes. Not all of them made it but some certainly did. Ok for genealogical purposes?

Submitted byEEon Mon, 07/26/2021 - 09:39

cryptoref, some editors would bleep it. Others would word it more soberly, and some would keep it with a chuckle. The one way to find out how an editor would react is to put it there and see what happens.