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The
"Your Life is Your
Story" Blog
Read about
quality family history and life story news, views, methods, products,
links, services
...and whatever else catches our fancy
Read past entries - see the blog archive index
May
16, 2008
He is a Pulitzer Prize winner. He's worked as an actor and
longtime radio broadcaster in addition to author. And he has
an incredible knack for capturing the essence of real people in his
wide-ranging interviews (Conversations
with America). Happy 96th birthday to
the one and only Studs
Terkel!
May
13, 2008
Check out Listen! - International Day for
Sharing Life Stories,
on May 16th 2008. The day will be an opportunity for people around the
world to gather in community halls, classrooms, public parks, theaters,
auditoriums, as well as websites, email exchanges, and virtual
environments to hear each other’s stories. Details here.
May
11, 2008
For all of the mothers - and for all of the children - and all of the
caregivers who are part of the lives of children as they grow into
adults, Happy Mother's Day. I was reminded by an excellent
blog entry from Judy Wright (www.artichokepress.com) that there
is much more to Mothering...and Mother's Day...than cards and breakfast
in bed.
Do yourself a favor and read Auntie
Artichoke's honest and insightful post, Mother's
Day Message to Adult
Children.
May
6, 2008
Have you heard about the new documentary film, Young@Heart,
opening this weekend in theaters? The film is the story of a
chorus group whose members range in age from 72 to 88. They
sing and perform contemporary music by bands like Coldplay, the
Ramones, Talking Heads, Sonic Youth and the Bee Gees. What a
dichotomy!
The chorus members are dedicated to
there art. They know their are in the twilight of their lives
(a
few have recently passed on), but they give it their all. Their
performances are often sell outs in
theaters. They are celebrating life. That's cool.
You can read a good article about Young@Heart
by Steve Persall (for the St. Petersburg Times) here. Visit
the official movie website from Fox Searchlight Films here.
May
5, 2008
The month of May is always a great month, especially for family
historians, bio-writers and the collectors of life stories.
It's Personal
History Month, so get started on your story! Want help getting started?
Another cool event this month is something called Pangea Day.
On May 10 people from around the globe will celebrate stories
through film. See the world through someone else's eyes.
Pangea Day will feature a 4-hour program of short films, live
music and visionary speakers. See more about this event at www.pangeaday.org.
April
29, 2008
It's not unusual for any of us to be self-centered, at least at times.
The cure is to do something to help others. As we
age we begin to recognize the importance, and the value, of giving back.
May 8th is the eighth annual AARP
Day of Service (more here). You can join
with thousands of other people around the country who want to make a
difference by volunteering time and effort to help their communities.
AARP has created a "50 Ways to Make a Difference" to
give you some ideas.
April
26, 2008
"Let's Make History Together" proclaims a banner across the top of the
home page of www.footnote.com. This
is a wonderful site to do research and find original documents online.
A great deal of the focus is on American veterans who've
served in various conflicts. The site helps you access
archival material from a variety of sources.
The site is more than a source of documents for your research. As they
describe it, "Footnote.com
is more than just an online repository for original documents. In
addition to hosting millions of records, Footnote supports a community
of people that are passionate about a variety of topics relating to
history."
I've bookmarked this site and I'll be exploring it some more.
Here is a good example of how the Internet is continuing to
help us with valuable resources for our life stories.
April
20, 2008
I've pondered myself the difference betweeen an autobiography and a
memoir and I've been asked the question. The differences are
not that apparent at first. But I came across a blog entry by
Susan Eberling at the WOW!
Women on Writing Blog discussing the subject and I thought
she made some good distinctions.
She wrote, "The purpose of autobiography is to highlight events, people
and places. The purpose of memoir is to take an event and make the
writer’s feelings and experiences real and relatable to the
reader. If a person’s life stands alone and they tell a story
about themselves in terms of history, that seems to be an
autobiography. If the story is the author’s retelling of
their life circumstances, replete with how they felt in the moment and
how they felt afterwards, then this would seem to be memoir."
You can read the full entry here.
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