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.