yourpassions.tk

It seems like only yesterday I was trekking around the neighborhood with a paper bag. All the kids on our street in Albuquerque went around together. I can barely recognize myself in the photo above. I think I see my little sister there, but I have to guess at the others. I think three of these kids moved away soon after this. How simple things were back then. A mask and maybe some odd pieces of clothing was costume enough, which is good, because that’s all my family could afford at the time while my father was going to the University of New Mexico on the GI Bill. But it wasn’t just a matter of economy. Costumes fifty some years ago were generally simpler and more imaginative. So were the goodies. I remember orange and white candy corn, and orange “circus peanuts.” Maybe a few jaw breakers or sticks of chewing gum. In later years there were a few mini-Hershey bars, and some people gave out iced sugar cookies or cupcakes. Some spoil sport always handed out the “untreat” — an apple. Unt...

My hubby is great at uncovering writing lessons for me. It never ceases to amaze me that a nuclear physicist who took the minimum requirement of lit courses is able to rattle off such stunningly insightful critiques of structure, conflicting detail, character development and other matters of interest to a writer. He freezes up at the thought of writing anything nontechnical himself, but he's a masterful reader, and I'm especially blessed to have the benefit of his skill. Last spring I nearly wrecked my voice reading Haven Kimmel's memoir, A Girl Called Zippy , aloud in the car on a long road trip. This memoir, published in 1991, came at the early edge of the current spate women's memoirs, and due to some weaknesses, it may not make the publisher's cut today. Despite the flaws, it's a charming and delightful story, and we spent lots of time laughing at the humor found throughout. I hadn't been sure Hubby would relate to the book, but he did enjoy it. He also ...

I’ve spent most of the past week listening to audio books as I lay in bed with pneumonia. I’ll spare you the details of the illness, other than to tell you that I couldn’t concentrate well enough even to read. I’m starting to feel human again, but not quite ready to write a full-length blog. Instead, I will share a story I received from a good friend in an e-mail recently. I met Herchell “Herm” Newman through the Lifestory YahooGroup , (now the Life-Story-Writing Group) about five years ago. Finding one of Herm’s stories in my inbox has always brightened my day. Three years ago I was thrilled to hear that one of his stories had been chosen for inclusion in Chicken Soup for the African American Soul . Now, that’s quite a distinction! Herm’s stories revolve around his family, his faith, and sometimes his career as a fire fighter — an occupation he retired from a few years ago. They are tender to the bone, with just the right balance of meat and sweetness, well-seasoned with humor. They w...

TA-DAH! The Albuquerque Years is finished! This is the last in a series of posts about my experience with Lulu.com as I published The Albuquerque Years , a memoir of my life as a preschooler. The saga began with The Project That Just Won't Quit on August 30, and continued with Part 2 on September 2. In my Lulu Project Update on September 22, I reported on the result of my initial order. Today, I posted the link to the book's own Lulu page . It will remain in the left column, just under the link to The Heart and Craft of Lifestory Writing . I have chosen to list The Albuquerque Years with no price mark-up, so anyone who wishes to order a copy as an example of Lulu's product quality can do so at nothing more than the cost of printing and postage. Anyone curious to see an example of a project brought to completion by the process I outline in The Heart and Craft , can do likewise. I include a short afterward with an overview of the Lulu Experience. Finishing this projec...

There’s nothing quite like a trip through a pile or album of old photos for bringing back memories. I recently ran across this shot of my own family, taken when I was about twelve. Oh, my, do the stories flood back! Here’s a list, in totally random order, of some (excluding the obvious stories describing individuals: The record player — a gift to my sister and me from Santa Claus when I was in first grade. That memory leads to Victor Borge’s recording, It’s In the Book , and the day my little sister repeated some words she had misunderstood from that story. Rather than “Of all the stupid audacity ...” she said, “Of all the stupid odd assy ...” Needless to say, that didn’t sit well with Mother. Which leads to stories of other things that didn’t sit well with Mother. And then there were the children’s records with stories and songs that we nearly wore clear through with repeated playing. Some of those records were plastic coated cardboard, others were Little Golden Records. The record pl...

It already had a lot of history before it came into our family. I found the old table in the stairwell near the garbage chute in our first apartment in Boston. People put large things there for the janitor to dispose of, and anything you found was fair game. I thought carefully before adopting the table. I knew it would be a life-long relationship. Forty-some years later, this appears to be the case. It still sits in my kitchen. It’s evolved considerably in the interim. For the first couple of years, a blotchy, peeling coat of colored varnish deepened the shade of the cherry wood. In the late sixties I painted it a lovely turquoise, accented with then fashionable antiquing, perfect for the spindled, early American legs. In the seventies, it acquired a coat of lime green paint to coordinate with the next house. Eventually it was too small for our growing family and moved to the basement, where it served a variety of passive purposes. When we moved to Pittsburgh, it obligingly returned t...

Don’t panic. The writing world as you’ve known it is not ending. Pencils, paper and keyboards will be around for ages to come, but today I want to pull aside the curtain on a writing tool you’ve probably used forever, but never thought about: virtual writing. I can’t remember the first time I heard of the study where a coach divided basketball players into three groups, but I think it was at least twenty-five years ago. He had one group practice shooting 100 baskets a day for a period of time. Another group didn't touch a ball, but visualized sinking 100 perfect baskets, and a third group did neither. It was no surprise that the performance of the last group suffered, but it was a surprise that the players who simply visualized did better than those who threw balls. In Train Your Mind, Change Your Brain , author Sharon Begley details numerous similar studies neuroscientists have conducted to further explore this phenomenon. The evidence is conclusive: merely visualizing actions st...

If you search the blog archives or click on the Purpose label, you’ll find a pile of posts about reasons for writing your lifestory. One of the most cogent reasons is eloquently expressed by Rich Turner on the Memorablia page of his website, The Grammar Curmudgeon . He writes: “... Our daughter, who has become interested in genealogy, was urging me to write my memories. She was prompted to this view by our discovery, after my mother's death, of a journal that my mother had kept. Our daughter transcribed the journal, scanned in pictures from old family albums, and put it together in a book that she distributed to most known survivors – my nieces and nephews (her cousins), my brother's widow, and so on. She asked me to edit it, and, when I did, I became aware of experiences my mother had that I never knew about and of a side of her personality of which I was completely unaware. I also realized that there is something to be said for passing on, in some permanent form, what we...