Oral History

June if a festive month for young people! Graduations and special events! This year just happens to be particularly significant in the lives of some very deserving students. Harford County has been participating in the Smithsonian Journey Stories Youth Oral History Project for the past four months, and on June 2 presented at the Hosanna School Museum one of the first exhibitions in the country. In a remarkably short time, many groups came together to present a program thanks to the Smithsonian Institution, the Maryland Humanities Council, Harford County Public Library, the Historical Society of Harford County and the Havre de Grace Boys and Girls Club.

June if a festive month for young people! Graduations and special events! This year just happens to be particularly significant in the lives of some very deserving students. Harford County has been participating in the Smithsonian Journey Stories Youth Oral History Project for the past four months, and on June 2 presented at the Hosanna School Museum one of the first exhibitions in the country. In a remarkably short time, many groups came together to present a program thanks to the Smithsonian Institution, the Maryland Humanities Council, Harford County Public Library, the Historical Society of Harford County and the Havre de Grace Boys and Girls Club.

In the 1990s and early 2000s, the HFStival was a summit for area alt-rock lovers. Organized by the late WHFS-FM, the festival boasted acts such as the Violent Femmes, Foo Fighters, Red Hot Chili Peppers and Coldplay, as well as myriad local and regional bands. It was many firsts for many people: Their first concert, their first time crowd surfing, their first time in a mosh pit. Saturday, the HFStival returns to Merriweather Post Pavilion , the site of the last HFStival in 2006.

Former Cleveland Browns and soon-to-be-former Denver Broncos quarterback Brady Quinn is being scrutinized for honest comments he made about Broncos teammate Tim Tebow to GQ magazine during the 2011 season. Ravens linebacker and 2011 NFL Defensive Player of the Year Terrell Suggs was also quoted by Michael Silver in “An Oral History of Tebow Time” -- and it seems Suggs eventually became a believer by the season's end. Here's an oral history of Suggs on Tebow based on a few quotes Silver used in his article in GQ's March issue . Week 8, after the Detroit Lions beat the Broncos: “They say we were giving him a hard time because he's a Christian.

Former Cleveland Browns and soon-to-be-former Denver Broncos quarterback Brady Quinn is being scrutinized for honest comments he made about Broncos teammate Tim Tebow to GQ magazine during the 2011 season. Ravens linebacker and 2011 NFL Defensive Player of the Year Terrell Suggs was also quoted by Michael Silver in “An Oral History of Tebow Time” -- and it seems Suggs eventually became a believer by the season's end. Here's an oral history of Suggs on Tebow based on a few quotes Silver used in his article in GQ's March issue . Week 8, after the Detroit Lions beat the Broncos: “They say we were giving him a hard time because he's a Christian.

Although not connected with the AFRAM festival, the Maryland Humanities Council (which is a member of the Coalition for Maryland History and Culture) is presenting "The African-American Experience in Maryland" on Saturday. It takes place at Baltimore City Community College, 2901 Liberty Heights Ave., from 9: 30 a.m. to 4 p.m. The free public forums will focus on family roots, oral history, family photographs, documents and artifacts.This is the fifth of six scheduled presentations that are being held around the state.

LET US BEGIN ANEW:AN ORAL HISTORY OFTHE KENNEDY PRESIDENCY.Gerald S. andDeborah R. Strober.HarperCollins.540 pages. $25.THE KENNEDY LEGACY.Theodore C. Sorenson.MacMillan.414 pages. $22. Of books about the Kennedys there is no end, to paraphrase historian V. O. Key. Here are a couple more.The first proceeds from an interesting premise. The authors, newcomers to political writing, interviewed 140 women and men (practically all men) who knew John F. Kennedy in some political context, 26 to 28 years after his death.

KANSAS CITY, Mo. - Bernie Tschirhart taps his temple, remembering the kamikaze attack that almost destroyed his ship 55 years ago. The Shawnee, Kan., man was a gunner's mate on the USS Mullany in World War II. On April 6, 1945, the destroyer was stationed off Okinawa when a Japanese suicide pilot drew a bead on the Mullany and slammed his plane into the ship. Shrapnel from that collision lies beneath the skin of Tschirhart's temple. "It happened so fast" says Tschirhart, now age 74. Dozens of sailors were killed in the attack.

In song, drama and craft, a Westminster music-and-arts festival is retelling stories from the Underground Railroad, relying on oral history and scant information culled from letters, diaries and memoirs to describe treacherous flights to freedom. Common Ground on the Hill, which opened this week for its ninth season at McDaniel College, has organized several classes on the dangers of escape routes, the safe houses that dotted the countryside, the freedom seekers and those who aided them, including the well-known abolitionist John Brown.

Dorothy Baker remembers opening an Elkridge beauty shop in 1945, when World War II limited her ability to get hair clips, bobby pins or other metal equipment. Louise Fields Blackstone remembers when she was 17 and earned $6 a week cooking, caring for two children and serving three meals a day for a family at Lawyers Hill and Montgomery Roads in Elkridge. Russell Moxley remembers being chief of police in Ellicott City in the 1930s and 1940s and providing his own uniform, gun, car and receptionist (his wife)

In the 1990s and early 2000s, the HFStival was a summit for area alt-rock lovers. Organized by the late WHFS-FM, the festival boasted acts such as the Violent Femmes, Foo Fighters, Red Hot Chili Peppers and Coldplay, as well as myriad local and regional bands. It was many firsts for many people: Their first concert, their first time crowd surfing, their first time in a mosh pit. Saturday, the HFStival returns to Merriweather Post Pavilion , the site of the last HFStival in 2006.

Last weekend, Annapolis Summer Garden Theatre opened Quilters: The Musical, which celebrates American womanhood as told through the experiences of 19th-century pioneer women. In the current issue of Applause, co-author and composer/lyricist Barbara Damashek describes Quilters "as a theatrical event of the early 1980s, a piece of oral history and feminist musical theater. ... It was one of the earlier explorations in the '80s of the use of oral history and monology as the source for plays."

Studs Terkel, who died on the last day of October at his home in Chicago, made an art of oral history. He was a character and a treasure and, in his own words, a uniquely American voice. What has happened to the human voice? Vox Humana. Hollering, shouting, quiet talking, buzz. I was leaving the airport, this is in Atlanta. You know, you leave the gate, you take a train that took you to concourse of your choice. And I get into this train. Dead silence. Few people seated or standing. Up above you hear a voice.

To learn more about attending the "Baltimore '68 Riots and Rebirth" conference at the University of Baltimore, go to www.ubalt.edu/baltimore68 or call 410-837-4079. If you are interested in providing an oral history of your experiences from April 1968, call 410-837-5296.

Touch and Go By Studs Terkel New Press / 270 pages / $24.95 In the beginning, before blogs, there was Studs Terkel, who, more than anyone else in what Time-Life founder Henry Luce called the American Century, gave the great mass of Americans who were not Henry Luce a way to be heard. "I have, after a fashion, been celebrated for having celebrated the lives of the uncelebrated among us; for lending voice to the face in the crowd," Terkel, now 95, writes in Touch and Go, his new memoir.

Two weeks ago on Real Time With Bill Maher, it was shocking to hear Mos Def, maybe the best actor in pictures today, express his belief that Sept. 11 was an inside job and the moon landing was a set-up. In the Shadow of the Moon, a vibrant documentary on the Apollo missions, is so inspiring it could turn conspiracy theorists like Mos Def into true believers. It's both irrefutably concrete and irresistibly uplifting. The British director David Sington uses stunning archival footage and a string of interviews with astronauts to construct a personal history of the race to beat the Soviets to the moon that has the buildup, velocity, setbacks and catharses of a classic drama.

There's something of a literary renaissance going on in southeastern Baltimore County. Earlier this year, Bob Staab's Growing Up In Dundalk: Precious Memories, an illustrated oral history of the community that recalled life there in the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s, was published. Staab's book was followed by Mary Jacqueline "Jackie" Nickel's Essex, which is part of Arcadia Publishing's "Image of America" series. Nickel, an Essex newspaper columnist and author, whose earlier book, Memories of `Old' Middle River: A Loving Look Back at the Town and its People, was published in 2002, died last week.