I have been working on the website and editing the interviews. I have compiled photographs for each woman in the interviews which will be added in the video I am creating and which will eventually be on the website. I went back to Janina’s home, the Polish woman I interviewed in July before going to Italy. She allowed me to take some personal pictures to add into the video and we talked again. Well, actually she talked again. She added more story to her story. I didn’t record this time. I just sat and listened and again was so moved by her experiences. She spoke more about her life in the United States and her husband and losing him when she was in her early 60’s. What I found and find so inspiring about all these women is how they talk about their life experiences, especially their losses. It’s sad yes, but they don’t speak with sadness, they speak with such truth, with such directness and say without using the words, that life has loss yet they are still here, living, loving, laughing, crying and telling their stories. They are strong and they’re at an age where, as my Grandmother says, there shouldn’t be any ‘bull-a-shita’.I continued to work on website and creating some lessons using the research compiled for the project. Took a few days off from the project and spending time with family and friends for Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving is obviously not celebrated in Italy yet my family there has their version. My aunts miss the food and overall symbolism of Thanksgiving. It was one of their favorite holidays when they lived in the States. They too will be making a turkey and mashed potatoes and so we will all be sharing this day together despite the seven-hour time difference…there’s that number seven again…
I contacted some nursing homes and I am re-thinking my plans in regards to contact with nursing homes. I would need more time in order to get permission to interview in the nursing homes—the homes have to get the ok from these women’s family members and I have realized that too much time would be needed to gather all the logistics, then the interviews, then the transcriptions, then the translations and then the subtitles and then organized into the project as a whole. I decided to keep it at seven women. Why seven? My sabbatical proposal was inspired by a particular date: 7/7/1943. 4+3=7. On that date 16 people lost their lives in the small town of Bagheria. 1+6=7. The youngest of these lives was a 7- year old girl—my grandmother’s youngest sister. The number seven seemed to show up a lot, oddly even this log written for the week of November 16th. 1+6=7. Maybe my love of Dante Alighieri is influencing my idea of numbers. Dante used some unique numerology throughout his book, La Divina Commedia—the Divine Comedy. I am not sure why the number seven seemed to be showing up for me; my favorite number is 3. I later did a little research on the number seven. It’s a fascinating number, with many cultural, psychological and spiritual meaning. I found this article interesting… |
Anna C.Instructor of Italian language and culture at OPRFHS Archives
June 2016
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