The "Your Life is Your Story" Blog Archives

Read about quality family history and life story news, views, methods, products, links, services

                     ...and whatever else catches our fancy

March, 2008

March 30, 2008

Audrey Galax, a fellow APH member, was part of a story-telling festival in Atlanta this weekend.  While I'm here in Albuquerque and couldn't attend, it certainly sounded like an interesting event, especially for those of us interested in the stories and personal histories of people, not just the famous, but the everyday and just as important individuals who contribute to the tapestry of the human experience.

Audrey described the event as "folk tales, tall tales, fairy tales, family remembrances, personal confessions, classics and new stories, original and traditional, from the hilarious to the heartrending." More about the Atlanta Storytelling Festival here.

March 26, 2008

What if you took a vacation that was a history lesson at the same time? Apparently more and more history buffs are doing just that, as reported in this AARP article, Vacation Ideas for History Buffs.

One woman drove through every state with her children when they were young to teach them about the country's past. Another woman took her husband through New Mexico to explore cave dwellings and hieroglyphics of the Pueblo Indians in the "Land of Enchantment".  That's dear to me as I live in New Mexico.

So the next time you decide on a family vacation perhaps you should include some historic sites.  Not only will it help bring history to life, but you will also create some fine family memories.

March 24, 2008

Memories can be preserved in many ways, such as journals, scrapbooks, letters, special mementos, audio and video recordings.  All can be useful in crafting a memoir, biography or personal history.

These mementos can also be quite valuable in helping those afflicted with Alzheimers as noted in this Mayo Clinic online article.

March 19, 2008

Well, I haven't posted in a few days because things have been quite busy. But thanks for checking in and I hope that you are discovering more about your lifre and your story.

If you are a science fiction fan you are familiar with Arthur C. Clarke. Along with Asimov, Heinlein and a few other Sci-FI icons (my fave is Philip K. Dick), Clarke gave us worlds and ideas and wonderful stories.  He lived a good long life, but he has passed away.  I heard he was proud that he retained a childlike wonder about life and the universe.  That's especially interesting considering one of his best novels was Childhood's End.  You probably best remember him for his work with Stanley Kubrick on the legendary movie, 2001: A Space Odyssey, but he wrote many amazing stories and novels.

A tribute by a longtime fan and friend Jeff Greenwald, a writer for Wired, is posted here.

March 13, 2008

I've always believed that music is a strong memory inducer.  How many times have you heard a song on the radio that took you back to a place and time? I'm a big lover of music and I have been all my life.  It is the major reason why I chose a career in radio broadcasting.

Writing about your life experiences and the part that music has played in it is a great way to tell some of your personal history.  I'm sure there are concerts, recordings (we used to call them vinyl records...remember?), times listening to the radio and so forth that will help you reminisce.  Good times, bad times....we've all had our share (to paraphrase a Led Zeppelin song).

Certainly one of the groups most influential in the lives of we baby boomers was the Beatles.  A group of British scientists are testing the link between memory and music and they are asking Beatles' fans to help create an autobiographical memories database.  They've aptly named this study the "Magical Memory Tour".

The online survey will help the psychologists understand how children develop a capacity for memory, how adults process recollections and how memory changes with age.  See the story posted at theStar.com.  You can contribute your Beatles' memory at magicalmemorytour.com.

March 10, 2008

I'm not above tooting my own horn, but I also like to give kudos when I see something good being done in the field of biography, personal history, life story, etc.  Sometimes it is at the expense of keeping visitors to my site or losing prospective customers, but I think of it more along the lines of the Macy's philosophy in the movie  Miracle on 34th Street.  They weren't afraid to send customers to a competitor if that was where they could get what they needed.

So, congratulations to The Biographer's Craft on their one-year anniversary with their fine e-zine.  The new issue talks about picking your favorite biographies, whether you can make a living writing biographies, and their pick for biography of the year. See it online here, and you can always subscribe at their website to get it by email.

And as far as personal horn tooting - you can subscribe to my free monthly Your Life is Your Story ezine here.

March 7, 2008

I was just watching some TV - on the Internet. No, it wasn't YouTube (www.youtube.com), although I look around there from time to time.  I was watching an episode (only about 13 minutes) of Down Under, hosted by George Morgan and Drew Smith, known as the Genealogy Guys. It's one of the many genealogy and family history online programs at Roots Television. These two men like to investigate cemetaries and find stories from tombstones.  They found an interesting one in Tampa, Florida. Find out (here) about the couple from the 1800's, slave owner and slave-made-free, and what their gravesite stone tells us about their life together.

March 4, 2008

Today was National Grammar Day.  Wow,  I didn't know there was a day dedicated to it. Poynter Online and their Writing Tools column offers some fun and interesting bits about the day. Go here.

March 3, 2008

Something called the Slice of Life Challenge is underway and will continue all through this month.  It's a writing project anyone can participate in and is put together by a couple of school teachers who host a blog site appropriately called Two Writing Teachers (teaching kids, catching minds, 872 miles apart).

They are allowing you to post your slice of life and read other people's as well. Using the web to share this way and encourage others to do a bit of life story writing is a good idea.  More here.

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