Label your photos and certificates - here's why

Paper Storage Problem

I inherited boxes, deed boxes, of old papers and certificates after the deaths of my parents and uncle. Some of the documents were clear. I was awarded a pass in a speech test as a child. I had totally forgotten it. Bu there was my name and the name of the organization and date.

Holiday Photos

  Later I looked at notes I was making. I had a photo with the name of an Italian restaurant, IO, in Singapore. I had other photos of an Italian restaurant in London, Osteria Modigliani. If I simply labelled the photo 'us in Italian restaurant', that would be meaningless years later. Since it was a restaurant I went to the previous week in Singapore, I knew where it was. However, if I had looked at it back in the UK twenty years later, I would have forgotten.

Awards And Ribbons

  Similarly, I found myself writing on the back of a ribbon for Best Speaker, from Toastmasters International, the date and place. What was missing? My name!
I know my name. I know I won the ribbon. But if I dropped it in another meeting, nobody would know which of the twenty people in the room the ribbon belonged to.

  My husband also won a ribbon. Which was his ribbon and which was mine? When we both die, our son will inherit all our possessions. He won't know which ribbons were won by which of us. If a stranger were to be your executor, and they find a certificate with no name on it, there's no record of who won it and what date.

Diary -  of a Nobody!

  Why would anybody care about your old diaries? Maybe you are not a VIP. Let's look at a few scenarios.

AA Certificate

  I have an AA award to my father from the 1900s. Maybe not very important to anybody but him when he was alive. Not important to anybody but me now. But in a few decades time that could be important to my grandchildren or even to the AA.

Roman Records, Victorian Victories, Recent Way Of Life

   A Roman inscription is fascinating to children and teachers nowadays. The everyday life 100 years ago is fascinating to schoolchildren.
   Cemeteries worldwide show that after people have died their relatives, and even strangers, think that a recording of somebody's life should be made and kept.

Language Preserved In Captions

Even the way you record names and places and people and events can be important.

Lockerbie Plane Crash

 Do you recall the Lockerbie plane disaster? A plane came down over Scotland caused by a bomb. All the possessions of the people were stored for decades afterwards. The curators of the possessions meticulously recorded every item. What use were the items?

a) They were used to identify who was on board. 

b )They were treasured by the relatives and descendants. 
  We went to Scotland and on the drive back to London, England, from Edinburgh (where we attended the jolly Edinburgh Festival with its street comedy acts) we passed the sign to Lockerbie.
If you go to Scotland you can visit the cemetery. At the far back, right, at the top of the slope, is the semi-circular memorial with the lives of each of the passengers and crew victims around the front and on the wall at the back. The lives of each person are meticulously recorded.

Why Label Awards, Documents & Photos?

   If an entire family dies in an accident, there's nobody left to ask. But the papers, photos, certificates, awards and other items with dates and names tell their story.
  So please label every photo and certificate with the name, date, place. Your moment of happiness and success will be recorded for the information and pleasure of your descendants and even complete strangers.

Author, Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker..

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Lockerbie - side trip from the Edinburgh Festival

Problem
How do you find the Lockerbie memorial?

Answers
We drove to Lockerbie on our way back to London from Edinburgh. First you head to Lockerbie.

The memorial is not a stand alone place but at the back of one of the regular cemeteries. As a result, people visiting their family graves don't want to be pushed aside by crowds of tourist wielding cameras.

I lurked around and surreptitiously look pictures. It's a very sad place. The graves of individuals are at the front. At the back wall are the photos and names and life stories of the people and the survivors or groups who have funded the memorial.

It was a Pan Am flight. Many Americans. Some not American. Male and female. Young and old.

I knew a Scottish reporter who was first on the scene to report. I had met him on a press tip to France. A mutual fried kept me informed about him. He spent much of the rest of his life following up this one story. He won an award. He died a long while back.

Wikipedia's article on the Lockerbie Bombing says:

Pan Am Flight 103 was a regularly scheduled Pan Am transatlantic flight from Frankfurt to Detroit via London and New York. On 21 December 1988, N739PA, the aircraft operating the transatlantic leg of the route, was destroyed by a bomb, killing all 243 passengers and 16 crew, in what became known as the Lockerbie bombing.^[3] Large sections of the aircraft crashed onto residential areas of Lockerbie, Scotland, killing 11 more people on the ground.

Wikipedia's article on Pan Am says:

Pan American World Airways, known from its founding until 1950 as Pan American Airways^[1] and commonly known as Pan Am, was the principal and largest international air carrier in the United States from 1927 until its collapse on December 4, 1991.

Websites
www.visitscotland.com
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pan_Am_Flight_103

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer.

Edinburgh Festival, Edinburgh and Scotland

Problems and Answers
First problem - I lost two hours of work on this post when I accidentally worked on a second opening of the page, then closed the first page which over wrote the later version. I then tried revert to draft which went back to the even earlier version. So, from now on, you will get my posts saved as I write the first draft.

1 When to go?
EDINBURGH INTERNATIONAL FESTIVAL
4 Aug – 28 Aug 2017

ROYAL MILITARY TATTOO
4-26 Aug 2017

New Year's Eve Dec 2017


2 Where to stay
My friends stay at the same hotel each year and book for the year ahead. That's why the central hotels are all booked up. You may have to go to latebookings.com and find something in your price range. Then book a more central hotel for the following year.

If you go by car, you can stay out of the city centre. If you are a group, try a self-catering place. The great ones I looked at were over £300 but slept four.

If you miss the Edinburgh Festival, consider booking New Year's Eve.

3 What to do and see
Performances, Plays and Performing

4 Stopover between Edinburgh, Scotland and London, England
I stayed in York for a night at a hotel which specialises in a wine theme and a large cellar restaurant, Hotel Du Vin. We travelled by car and made stops on the way up and back to see one of several places associated with Scottish hero Bruce and the spider. (See later post.) Also Lockerbie (see later post.

5 Any Comedy courses?
If you pay for a one day or two day or one week comedy or acting training course which ends with a performance in Edinburgh you then get invited to a post production party in London where you might meet a talent scout.

Going Solo
It's expensive to hire a venue for a night. To get an audience you need one or more of these:
A sponsor. A charity. Mum and Dad. Your savings. A theatre or orchestra or arts grant or city or country grant or student or university group.
Advertising budget for newspapers, free newspaper, posters, flyers.
People to hand out flyers.
Pub alongside with existing clientele.
Two nights or more so that those in the audience enjoying night one will come back on night two or send their friends.
An existing huge fan club or access to huge media circulation
A really wacky idea which gets lots of newspaper publicity.
A big name star to perform or endorse you.
Prior performance.

Who can perform? Actors in skits, plays, stand up comedy, open microphone shows, bands, poetry readings, small music groups, choirs and orchestras, singer-songwriters, musicals, ballets and dancers, street performers.
Alongside may be sellers of relevant books, souvenirs, tee-shirts, related to performances and to Edinburgh or Scotland.
Going With Groups
Look for comedy and acting courses. They end with a show. Just one night.

A huge group of students or others whose families will all pay a little for the performance.
A student group from a religious organisation sponsored by the church or synagogue, either on a topic or theme they like, or to create a fellowship of like-minded people.

Remember to record your comedy online for advance publicity and post-event publicity for the next year.

Invite the press to attend. Send a free ticket. Send a flyer for publicity. Take out an advertisement. Send them a photo or a video link. If they are too busy to send a photographer, offer to call at their office in costume for a photo with the reporter. You can take a selfie with your smart phone or laptop or theirs.

Tips & Websites
Edinburgh Festival
www.edfringe.com
http://edinburgh.org
https://www.latebookings.com//
www.lateluxury.com
https://www.visitscotland.com

Author, Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker.

How to Behave And Take Photos at Holocaust Memorials, Pearl Harbour and Cemeteries

Problems
1 Other people are posing for smiling group photos at Auschwitz and Pearl Harbour. Should I say anything?
2 I pose for photos beside a memorial to a famous author, or a person featured in a novel. How to avoid smiling photos.

Answer
1 Ask the tour guide or site owner to put up a sign.
2 Take several photos so you can pick one which looks suitable.

Stories
The subject of behaviour is in the news because of Holocaust Memorial Day in January. Auschwitz was liberated by the Russians, already abandoned by the Germans, in 1945. A person who was shocked to see photos of adults, teenagers and children leaping about and laughing and striking silly poses on holocaust memorials uploaded photos from other people's websites. He changed the backgrounds to show the people posing against horrific concentration camp pictures.

One argument is that a memorial is not a cemetery, unlike Auschwitz. However, I still think it is inappropriate to stand smiling alongside a list of names of dead people, of which there are many on a tourist's list. Some people even think it is not appropriate to stand alongside a list of names. However, I wanted to stand alongside the names at the Menin Gate in Europe, and Lockerbie, in Scotland, to show I was there, and create human interest, and make my travel article and my own memories of my holiday less gloomy.

1 I first became aware of this problem at Pearl Harbour when I saw groups of smiling orientals posing for photos. As they were speaking what I presumed was Japanese I felt uncomfortable. You cannot assume that a smiling oriental is showing disrespect. The Japanese often smile when announcing a death in their own family, to mitigate the impact on the listener. (The say some people joke at funerals, not out of disrespect but in an attempt to lighten the mood.)

2 At Auschwitz I saw orientals posing for a group photo by the train. I wondered whether they understood the significance of what they were seeing, as many people were on a whole day tour, of which Auschwitz was only part.

3 I remember standing at the gravestone of the boy who was featured in a book by Charles Dickens. Dickens had been sent to write a novel highlighting the dangers and abuses of sending unwanted stepchildren away to boarding schools. (The story went that many children died at a particular school, where the headmaster was depicted as having one eye. The writers of articles defending the headmaster said that although many children died at the school, even more died outside the school, because the death rate of children from malnutrition and communicable illnesses was so high in those days.) I stood pointing at the gravestone of a boy who had died.

The photographer, as usual, before snapping the picture, called, "Smile!"

I shouted back, 'Take several photos!'

I was later able to select a photo of myself looking serious and contemplative.

It is a reminder that photos you take and upload to the internet can be viewed by many others as well as taken out of context.

Tips
Read more on Y o l o c a u s t:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-38675835
https://yolocaust.de (Includes an apology from one of the people seen leaping about on a memorial, who asks for the photo to be removed and apologises.)

Read more on physically and mentally disabled victims of the holocaust:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-38773057

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker.