Imagery & Words

Commentary: Remembering Kindertransport

Two commentators discuss the documentary film "Remembering Kindertransport."
A previous episode of Imagery & Words was based on the soundtrack from that documentary.
You can watch the film's trailer here: https://vimeo.com/410852347?share=copy
 

Southeast: Life In The Alaska Panhandle

This is the audio track of the documentary short film "Southeast: Life In The Alaska Panhandle, a photo essay on being a visitor versus a resident of Southeast Alaska.
It originally aired on MarinTV, the non-commercial, community TV station operated by the Community Media Center of Marin in San Rafael, California. It has been shown on 79 other such stations across the U.S. It was an Official Selection of the Western Canadian International Film Festival and the Ketchikan Film Festival.
In this visual essay shot at Glacier Bay, Juneau, Ketchikan, Petersburg and Sitka, travel writer Dick Jordan transports you to the Alaska Panhandle, known simply as "Southeast" to its 75,000 residents living in widely dispersed pockets of civilization unconnected to each other by roads. 
Dick calls the Panhandle "a land empty of men, but full of life,” nearly all of which belongs to the trees, the bears, the birds, the fish and the marine mammals."
The scenery is stunning, but the weather is problematic, even in summer, and communities are small, and isolated from each other and the rest of the world.
The show prompts you to ponder the same question that has confronted many first-time visitors to Southeast Alaska: Should I move to this beautiful place, or just pay it a visit and leave? 

Remembering Kindertransport

The Kindertransport was a British scheme to rescue nearly 10,000 predominantly Jewish children from Nazi occupied territories and give them temporary refuge in Britain. The children arrived from December 1938 to September 1939. With the outbreak of war, borders were closed and all transports ceased.
Marion Walter was one of those thousands of Jewish children taken to England where she thrived as a student of mathematics.
She would later emigrate to the United States and become a professor of mathematics, including a final stint in Eugene at the University of Oregon.
The story of her life before and after Kindertransport is told in the documentary film, Remembering Kindertransport, produced by filmmaker and podcaster, Dick Jordan.
This episode of Imagery & Words is based on the soundtrack from that documentary.
You can watch the film's trailer here: https://vimeo.com/410852347?share=copy

A Sense of Place

Have you ever traveled to a destination you had never visited in the past and come away with a clear sense of the place?
In this podcast episode, “A Sense of Place,” travel writer Dick Jordan recounts his time in four unique locations in Western North America.
 

”Choosing Ourselves” - A Parent-Child Conversation Becomes A Memoir

"Choosing Ourselves" (https://choosingourselves.com/) is the most remarkable memoir that I have ever encountered.
Memoir writers whom I have heard discuss putting down on paper their recollection of events of their past lives and those who have been a part of it have feared that their friends and family members who appear in this published "life story" will react unfavorably to how they have been depicted and will claim that their own memories of what transpired is far different, and far more accurate then those of the author.
Left with a foreboding feeling that the words put on the page will strain or sever the relationship for those who they have loved most, the memoir writer faces a difficult decision: Finish the memoir, have it published and face rebellion and rejection, or just chuck the entire project into a physical and mental trash can.
I had the exceptional opportunity to hear Barbara Walker and her son, Jim Walker, Jr., co-authors of the memoir "Choosing Ourselves," along with Barbara's husband and Jim Jr.'s father, Jim Walker, Sr., read excerpts from the book during an hour-long presentation given on November 9, 2023 at the Cascade Manor retirement community in Eugene, Oregon where Barbara, Jim Sr. and I reside.
I learned that not only did writing the memoir together completely change the relationship between mother and son, bringing them closer to each other emotionally than they had been in years past, but that it was Jim Jr. who came up with the idea that they should jointly take a memoir writing class as a means of learning how to talk frankly to each other about the feelings each had held inside, largely undisclosed to the other, while Jim Jr. was growing up.
Questions each had about who was to blame for the deformity Jim Jr. had been born with and which required him to undergo what seemed like endless surgeries had never been answered. Was it Barbara's fault? Was it Jim Jr.'s? Or was it undeserved punishment meted out by God, if such an deity even existed?
The writing reflects both remarkable clarity and, especially in the case of Jim Jr.'s word, is poetically moving.
I have attended my fair share of author readings which I tend to find poorly paced and sleep-inducing.
But if the "Choosing Ourselves" reading had gone on from it's 7:00 pm start time until 7:00 am the following morning I would have stayed upright, awake and attentive in the not-entirely-comfortable chair in which I was seated.
The book is that good so if you have not already done, so be sure to listen to this podcast episode which is the audio track of the film I made of their book reading which I attended in person.