Magical Memoir Moments

Let Your Life Speak: A Memoir Writer’s Memoir

Parker Palmer turned 70 years old today.  I celebrated his birthday by re-reading his book Let Your Life Speak.  I took the memoir lens in hand and went searching for how Parker uses his life story in this book. The code on the back jacket cover says “spirituality/work life” not “memoir.” But what if we…

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Parker Palmer on Bill Moyers Journal: Ground On Which It's Safe to Stand

If you missed Parker Palmer’s appearance on Bill Moyers Journal last Friday, cheer up.  Here it is. Apparently, the broadcast about illusion and reality in our current economic crisis, which included Parker talking about depression in his own life, cheered many people.  Funny how truth does that–in just the paradoxical way that Parker himself explains…

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Here If You Need Me: A Profoundly Beautiful Love

This weekend I read two memoirs:  one from a Mennonite doctor who spent a year in Somalia as a medical missionary and one from a Unitarian Universalist minister who is a chaplain in Maine.  Neither of these topics may sound like scintillating reads, but both of them were. The book about the Mennonite doctor will…

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This American Life: What Has Kept You Together?

If the 21st century is the memoir century, then the job of this blog is to catalogue, comment, and critique.  In the next weeks, you can expect to see more posts about the uses of memoir in the media world, whether that world is “mainstream,” “social media,” book publishing, online publishing, radio, television, film or…

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A Memoir that Awakens the Spiritual Version of the American Dream

This morning, as is our habit, my husband and I attended Skyridge Church of the Brethren.  Our pastor Debbie preached about healing, using as a lectionary text Psalm 30, the one that promises, in the majestic language of the King James Bible, that “weeping endureth for the night but joy cometh in the morning.”  This…

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Six-Word Memoir Valentine's Day Special

If you have not yet discovered the joy of the six-word memoir, here’s a past post that will fill you in–a lecture at Google by the authors of this book: And if you missed this week’s long NPR segment on six-word memoirs on love and heartbreak, here’s the link that will take you there. Below…

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Memoir: "Bag Lady's" Antidote to Losing Her Madoff-Managed Fortune

It had to happen.  Someone who lost a fortune in the scandalous Madoff swindle would write about it and get a book contract.  What’s amazing to me is the speed at which this double transformation transpired.  Madoff was charged with massive fraud on Dec. 11, 2008. Six days later, one of his victims, Alexandra Penney,…

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Facebook and Memoir: 25 Things About Me

Every day some new memoir breeze seems to sweep through our culture–or so it seems when the memoir windsock is in place.  I have already commented on the six-word memoir, on memoir in the political campaign, and memoir controversies (see categories on the right-hand side of this entry).  Now there is the 25 Things About…

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Flying First Class: All the Way from Minneapolis to San Francisco

One of the great pleasures of work involving travel is that sometimes a kindred spirit happens to sit in the seat next to you. I was blessed by such an encounter yesterday. It started when another business traveler, Rose, and I were seated in 8-D and 8-F. She had the aisle. I had the window….

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Writing Down the Bones: Slow and Dumb

I remember reading this breakthrough book soon after it was published in the late 1980’s.  I don’t remember how I bought the book, and I don’t have the old copy on my shelf, so I may have loaned or given it away, Mostly, I remember how I felt after reading it. High!  I had never…

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