Rooted in History

by Annie Livingston • may 2024

Oral history interviews take us to fascinating places. And I don’t just mean geographically (although that’s true too). They take us to the inner circle of our narrators, offering glimpses into what people choose to surround themselves with – be it at their homes or work or somewhere in between. We’ve seen dirty dishes in the sink, glimpsed the high-finish gloss on a desk, heard the whirring of machines used for scientific discovery, stood on a music stage before the audience files in, and walked through herds of sheep on a coastal farm.

In one such encounter, our oral historian was rewarded with this view of a small forest amidst several hundred acres of farmland. The trees date back multiple generations, thriving along a pond that provides water for crops and livestock.

Quite literally, this forest tells a story. The tree rings concealed within each of the evergreens reveal the experiences of an entire lifetime. Those rings tell us more than the number of years the tree has been around. The width, color, and pattern of the rings tell us about past climate conditions, and external disruptions. These historical moments help us to better understand the tree today.

When George and I started InnerCircle Stories, we wanted to leverage our collective 25 years of oral history experience to capture stories big and small about remarkable people and places. We wanted to help document the stories, the adversities, and the triumphs that we human beings experience as we leave our mark on the world and that bring us to where we are today. As Paul Giamatti’s character in The Holdovers says, “History is not simply a study of the past. It is an explanation of the present.” We feel that deeply in the work that we do.