100 Memoirs

Pittsburgh:  Saturday morning. Post-Starbucks and pre-wedding planning day with Kate and Nik, Anthony and Chelsea, Ila and Neal.In a mellow, grateful, Thanksgiving Weekend mood.

It occurred to me, as I was returning from my third trip to NYC last week, that perhaps I have been around the world (24, 901 miles) in the last 80 days. [...]

Our son Anthony and our new daughter-in-law Chelsea were married September 12 at All Souls Unitarian Church in Manhattan. It’s time to share more of the story that has been unfolding here since they announced their engagement. I described the synchronicity in their meeting–their origin story involving Forrest Church and Match.com here.  And I described [...]

Last Sunday, Stuart and I celebrated the last day of August with one of our many bike rides in the hill/woods/lake country here in southwestern Michigan. We have enjoyed watching the grape vines become green, then produce fruit, and soon we will get to observe the harvest.  Next Tuesday another sign of the season arrives–all [...]

My first post to this blog took place August 9, 2008. It was a birthday present from my son Anthony, who has his own blog. Since then, there have been 118 other posts and 398 comments. Thank you, dear readers!
I especially want to thank several other bloggers, GutsyWriter, Babsland, OKChelsea,  for commenting frequently, both [...]

Time for a little history report. My first blog post ever was written for the Fetzer Institute Campaign for Love and Forgiveness website. The subject was the week-long volunteer opportunity I was given to help with Katrina recovery in New Orleans. March 24-April, 3 blog posts appeared, and USA Today published my op-ed article about [...]

Embarrassing story:  When I was a newbie grad student at the University of Texas at Austin, I turned in a review of a book that my professor did not recognize.  He asked me why I chose this book to review.  I responded, “Because it was on my shelf.” He looked horrified.
As Paul Newman might say, [...]

Forrest Church’s voice rings in my head today. I finished his memoir last night, and  many of his themes are ones deeply embedded in my own life.  His 2008 book, Love & Death: My Journey Through the Valley of the Shadow, published by Beacon Press, focuses on the two big ideas of the title, especially [...]

How long have I been teaching memoir writing? On its face, the answer is, “not very,” but I can also truthfully say “about 40 years.”
How can both be true?  The recent teaching comes in the form of workshops I have blogged about previously– three sessions at the Fetzer Institute and two about workshops given at [...]

Today was Blogging-in-WordPress Lesson #2 with my son Anthony.  I wanted to know how to embed a video, so he showed me how.  Yippee!  Here is Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love.

My son Anthony keeps showing me wonderful places to go online, especially places that help me learn more about social media and might brighten the face of this blog.  The latest is Shelfari, a place to rate books, talk about books, and meet new book lovers.  I have started a group there called–you guessed it–100 [...]