Let me start by giving you a sense of what this blog is going to be about. I'm going to be doing oral history interviews about the nonprofit organization called Shiloh, NYC (http://www.shilohnyc.org/). I have family roots at Shiloh, and from some of the pictures on this blog you can see that I spent time there as a very tiny person. You can also see that there was what I'll lovingly call a bit of a hippie-influenced look on some of the staff during the group photo taken in the 1970s, but Shiloh goes back even before that to the 1950s, and it still exists today. Since Shiloh's beginnings, people from all over the country have come to New York City to work with at-risk kids, and on the other side of the coin kids and families in parts of New York City have been generous to Shiloh staff and volunteers.
Now that I'm not that very tiny person anymore, I have the extraordinary opportunity to be working as a full-time oral historian and looking, both from an academic and a personal point of view, at all of the interesting topics that have played out in Shiloh's history--like race, religion, culture--topics that can have profound meaning in the lives of these people as the strands intersect again and again. Oral history is a very useful and powerful tool for viewing threads like this. Here's a dictionary definition:
oral history (noun)
information of historical or sociological importance obtained usually by tape-recorded interviews with persons whose experiences and memories are representative or whose lives have been of special significance.
I'll be interviewing both staff and participant alums. These interviews will take me all over the country, back in time, and to the roots of my own nuclear family. I hope to post sound and photos on this blog that help to tell Shiloh's compelling story. I also hope you'll find the journey relevant to your own journey. I'll keep you posted. . .
