I was in and out of the hospital but everything is fine now.

My computer decided it needed a rest. I had to get a new hard drive, a new motherboard and a new CDROM drive. I have a Dell pc and I must say here that the tech people at Dell are the greatest. I have a three year on site maintenance contract for which I am very grateful. They provided their usual excellent service and the technician came and installed all of the necessary hardware!

Of course I have been busy migrating all of my data on to the new hard drive, and installing all of the necessary software. I have also been busy learning Office 2010, which I purchased when my pc was up and running again. I am still working on catching up with things, but I do hope to be posting to my blog very soon.

So, to my readers – please stay tuned and let me know what you would like to read about.

Thanks!

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This was all I knew about his time in the military. I wish I had a story to go with this picture.

The only thing I do remember is that every year on Memorial Day my father bought the artificial poppy in rememberance of those who served their country, but as a child I did know the significance of this wild flower.

After doing some research, I discovered the following:

Flanders is the name of the whole western part of Belgium that saw some of the most concentrated and bloodiest fights of the First World War.

 There was complete devastation – buildings, roads, trees and natural life simply disappeared, where once there were homes and farms there was now a sea of mud a grave for the dead where the men still lived and fought.

 Only one other living thing survived and that was the poppy, flowering each year with the coming of the warm weather. It brought life, hope, color and reassurance to those still fighting.

 Poppies on flower in rooted up soil; there seeds can lie in the ground for years without germinating and only grow after the ground has been disturbed.

 The most recent and enduring tradition began in WWI when John McCrae wrote the following poem:

                        “In Flanders Fields the poppies blow

                        Between the crosses, row on row

                        That mark our place; and in the sky

                        The larks, still bravely singing, fly

                        Scarce heard amid the guns below.

                        We are the Dead. Short days ago

                        We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,

                        Loved and were loved, and now we lie,

                                    In Flanders Fields.

                        Take up our quarrel with the foe

                        To you from failing hands we throw

                        The torch; be yours to hold it high.

                       If  ye break faith with us who die

                        We shall not sleep, though poppies grow

                                    In Flanders Fields.

                                                John McCrae 1915

By 1918 the poem was well known throughout the allied world. Monia Michael, an American woman wrote these lines in reply:

                        We cherish too, the Poppy red

                        That grows on fields where valor led,

                        It seems to signal to the skies

                        That blood of heroes never dies.

Let’s take time this Memorial Day and every day to honor and remember all of the heroes who serve in the military; those that are living and served their country in the past,  those that are still serving their country today, and those who made the supreme sacrifice by giving their lives for their country.  Each and every one is a hero – they give their all so that we may enjoy the freedom that we have living in America!

• Cut down on background noise. Recording in a noisy environment makes it doubly difficult to decipher your words. These environments may include airports, restaurants, buses, planes and trains – anywhere there is a degree of background noise.

• Record in a quiet environment. It will greatly reduce the amount of transcription time if you make the effort to record in a quiet environment. Close windows and doors and move away from air conditioning, photocopiers and machinery.

• Ensure that the speaker is speaking loud enough. If the speaker has a quiet voice the chances are the recording will be very poor and difficult to hear.  If you can not hear the speaker’s voice, then the chances are the microphone won’t pick it up either. Please ask the speaker to raise their voice if necessary.

• Use an external microphone. Most built-in microphones are of poor quality with limited control over volume levels. Remember that microphones will pick up sound from the nearest source – which in this case is the recording equipment. Using a good quality, compatible microphone will greatly enhance the quality of the recording, leading to a subsequent reduction in transcription time.

• Place the microphone near the speaker or speakers. While it may be tempting for the interviewer to sit very close to the recorder to check to make sure it is working, if the interviewee is too far away from the microphone, then the clarity of the recording will suffer. You want to ensure that the microphone is as close as possible to the speaker.

One final point – The best type of recording to use is digital. Good clear recordings result in highly accurate transcripts. The less time it takes to transcribe your material, the lower your final cost will be.

What type of transcript do you need?

•  Verbatim - This is a full transcript of everything that is said in the recording which includes the common ‘ems’ and ‘eres’, you knows’, ‘I mean’, and ‘sort of’ – etc. these types of transcripts are often required for interviews by universities for qualitative analysis and by the legal profession.

• Smart Verbatim  This is intermediate transcription, by keeping it verbatim, however simply omitting the ‘ems’ and ‘ers’ and other meaningless utterances.

• Intelligent Verbatim  This type of transcription is commonly used for lectures, meetings, conferences, symposia and some interviews. All housekeeping issues are omitted from the transcript, and the ‘ems’ and ‘ers’, ‘you know’, ‘I mean’ and ‘sort of utterances are left out. In addition abbreviations can be removed on request and replaced with formal terms, such as “I’ve’ is replaced with ‘I have’ and ‘you’re’ is replaced with ‘you are’. Please note that this option will slow the transcription process down a little and in turn will affect the time it takes to transcribe, thus increasing the cost.

• Edited Transcription – This is the type of transcription most often requested in conjunction with interview transcription for authors. Real people, as we all know, do not speak in concise, grammatically correct sentences. Capturing the flavor or what a person actually said, while still producing a document that is publication-ready is an art form. Once again, this type of transcription will take more time, and can increase the cost considerably.

 One other thing, if you have concerns about confidentiality, you want to be sure you request a signed confidentiality agreement before entering into any contract for transcription.

 Then on April 5, 1919 my Grandfather passed away at the young age of 54. The war was over then but my father did not come home until June 12, 1919 and then received an honorable discharge on June 19, 1919.

 He did not learn of his father’s death until he arrived home. I suppose everyone thought it best not to write him of his father’s passing, but to wait until he came home. I cannot imagine how he must have felt, coming home from the war and hearing such sad news.

 While I do know the facts and dates, I would love to have had some written record of their experiences and the feelings behind those experiences which are clearly a part of history. What a wonderful treasure it would have been if my parents had shared those memories, and recorded them in a beautiful Memory Keepsake.

 Everyone does have a story to tell! My message to each and every one is, keep those treasured memories alive and families connected by recording your story.

This is the picture of my mother that my father carried with him while in France.

 Then he boarded the troop ship the Leviathan and served his country in Geradmer Sector Meuse, Argonne France from July 6, 1918 to June 12, 1919. I know he was wounded while in France but I do not know when or what happened the rest of the time he was in the service.

 World War I was known at the time as “The Great War” and it officially ended when the Treaty of Versailles was signed on June 18, 1919, in the palace of Versailles outside the town of Versailles, France. However fighting ceased seven months earlier when an armistice between the Allied nations and Germany went into effect on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month. For that reason, November 11, 1918 is generally regarded as the end of “the war to end all wars.”

 I can only imagine how difficult it must have been for both of my parents. They had only been married two days when my father returned to his base camp. Then in less than three months he was off to fight in what is now called the Great War. The war front was not covered back then like it is today, so my mother must have been very worried about him and wondering what was happening. Then to get word that he had been wounded had to have been so difficult to hear.

Stay tuned for Part 3 to hear the rest of the story.

My father was 21 when he enlisted in the U. S. Army. On July 19, 1917 he left Baltimore and was sworn in at Fort Slocum, New York on July 22, 1917. His rating was private first class. He left New York on July 30 and went to Chickamauga Park, Georgia.

He came home on furlough April 17, 1918 and married my mother on April 22, 1918. On April 24, 1918 just two days after marrying my mother he went back to Chickamauga Park, Georgia and then moved to Camp Wadsworth, South Carolina in May of 1918.

These are some of the facts, but facts can not tell the story. I do have a few pictures and I can only try to imagine how it must have been. I do not recall that time of their life ever being talked about, and I am sure it wasn’t.

Stay tuned for Part 2 to hear more of the story.

With Memorial Day just around the corner I would like to focus on Veterans Stories as a theme. Every person who has served in the military deserves to have their stories permanently recorded as a way of honoring their valuable contributions to protecting us and preserving our way of life.

 Veterans stories are accounts of their experiences, told in their own words and that add the human experience to the facts. It could be the World War II veteran, who we are loosing at the rate of 1800 a day, the Korean veteran who unfortunately have been largely forgotten, the Vietnam vet who went off to an unpopular war and came home to a welcome they did not deserve, the veterans of the Gulf Wars and all others who served outside these particular conflicts.

 I believe it is incumbent upon each and every one of us to encourage our loved ones who served in the military to tell their story. Every veteran has a story that needs to be told – they are a part of history.

If you have a loved one who gave their life in the service of their country, you might want to consider collecting the stories from those who knew your loved one and create a Memory Keepsake in their honor.

 You can also check out the following web site:

 www.loc.gov/vets   for the Veterans History Project – Library of Congress

 Let’s honor all who have served their country, not just on Memorial Day or Veterans Day, but every day!

• With your speech transcribed into text on paper, you can easily customize it for new clients, add new material, and delete outdated sections.

• A certain percentage in an audience will have hearing problems and not be able to understand you clearly. Give them a transcript of your speech, or one that was transcribed earlier from another time that you gave basically the same speech.

• Convert recordings of your speeches into material for a book or an e-Book to help establish your reputation as a credible expert in our field and create additional profits for your business.

• Have recordings of your radio and TV interviews transcribed and convert the transcripts into articles, book chapters, or to add to you press kit.

• Provide reporters and editors with transcripts of your speeches to make it as easy as possible for them to give you press coverage, making it more likely to create good publicity for yourself and your client.

• If a prospective client asks if you have ever talked about a specific topic, you can send an excerpt from a transcribed speech that you gave for another client that addressed that topic.

Add your own ideas to this list and make your speeches work for you!

 Podcasts were initially used to allow people to distribute their own content or radio style shows to a wider audience. The clarity of a podcast digital recording has been ideal for a variety of media, such as interviews, teleconferences, lectures/speakers, oral history interviews, writers, radio broadcasts and more.

So why do you need a transcript if you have the audio?

1. A quality audio supported by a transcript will always generate more interest and a bigger audience than an audio on its own.

2. If someone is hearing impaired, their only option may be to read a transcript. A transcript can do for the hearing impaired, what books on tape do for the visually impaired.

3. Reading a transcript can also be helpful if voices on the audio are hard to understand. Having a back-up transcript can be helpful in such circumstances so they may be able to clarify any bits they did not hear clearly the first time around.

4. Some people prefer to read content because it is quicker for them rather than listening to an audio file.

5. Some people may only want to listen to a small section at a time and without a transcript they would have to listen to the whole recording or spool back and forth in order to try to find the relevant part.

6. Transcripts can be tweaked to ensure the search engines can find you by adding relevant hyperlinks and keywords.

7. By providing all options for your audience, they will remember which audios are more user friendly than others.

Provide your audience with choices; they will thank you for it!