I’ve just begun to realize what a gift my father gave me in having our old family movies saved to DVDs. Each time I watch them, I remember something new – or something old – in our family history. You’ve seen a few of my family stories in earlier posts […]
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Exercise Your Right To Vote
Before my maternal grandfather, a taciturn businessman from Oregon, married my grandmother, he allegedly told her, “I don’t care if you’re Catholic, but you’d better vote Republican.” I don’t know if the story is true, and I don’t know how my grandmother voted. After all, she gave my mother the […]
Continue readingFamily Pictures: Capturing History As the Mind Cannot
Both my dad and my mother’s father took lots of pictures over the years. As kids, my siblings and I were always smiling at the camera for my father or grandfather, and often both of them at the same time until my grandfather died. There were four standard poses for […]
Continue readingWriting Memoir: Family Myth Defines Us, Unless We Define Ourselves
Earlier this month I attended the Kansas Authors Club, District 2, retreat at Lake Doniphan Conference & Retreat Center in Excelsior Springs, Missouri. (Yes, the Kansas authors were brave enough to cross the state line. The Border Wars have been over for a long, long time.) My favorite part of the […]
Continue readingTasting Your Memories
Later this year my husband and I will celebrate our 35th anniversary. We started dating, got serious, and were married all in 1977, so I’ll be celebrating 35th anniversaries of major events in our relationship all year. Last month was the 35th anniversary of our first date. No one remembered […]
Continue reading“Family Recipe” anthology now available!
My book Family Recipe: Sweet and saucy stories, essays and poems about family life has now been published by Rickover Publishing. The paperback is available through CreateSpace Amazon And the ebook is available in two formats: Kindle (MOBI) Nook (EPUB) This book would make a wonderful accompaniment to an Easter basket […]
Continue readingAchieving our Dreams by Telling Our Stories . . . to Ourselves and Our Loved Ones
I’ve recently read two articles that made me think about the importance of telling our stories to ourselves and to our close family members. If we don’t talk about our dreams, how can our loved ones support us? The first article I saw was a blogpost by Mary Jo Asmus of […]
Continue readingStories Are the Heart and Soul of Communication
Heidi Cohen writes a good blog offering Practical Marketing Advice. Her February 13 post, 13 Ways Stories Support Social Media Marketing, contains good information for writers. Heidi says that stories are the heart and soul of social media, but I would argue stories are the heart and soul of any […]
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