Magical Memoir Moments
Selling Serenity: More Dancing with Change
I promised my Facebook friends that I would tell the story of how we sold our Kalamazoo, MI, house (named Serenity) after the closing last Thursday, Feb. 10, 2011. So why not share the saga with the readers of 100Memoirs.com also? The buying and selling of real estate in the current market is not for the…
Are There Too Many Memoirs? Should Most Life Stories Not Be Told?
If you follow memoir in the news (one of the categories in this blog which could easily be ten times larger if I followed all the relevant stories here), you probably have read Neil Genzlinger’s savage review of three recently published memoirs (along with praise for a fourth one) in the The New York Times…
What Does Work Mean to You? Reporting a Facebook Response
Since I quoted from Carl Jung last time, it’s only fair to quote one of Sigmund Freud’s most famous sayings: “Love and work are the cornerstones of our humanness.” Lately, I’ve been musing about these two subjects of love and work in a series of posts on family, home, and change. You can find them listed…
Dancing with Change: A Mini-Memoir
As you may have guessed by now, the December and January posts on this blog are more about issues related to my current life than about the subject of memoir per se. That’s because Stuart and I are in the midst of major post-mid-life changes. Of course, these changes are relevant to the subject of…
What is Your Work: Is It Love Made Visible?
I am a child of the sixties, having graduated from high school in 1966 and college in 1970. Everyone in those days seemed to be reading The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran. We read the selection on marriage at a wedding sometime in the early ’70’s: I had not reread The Prophet for years until I…
An Amish Memoir: Saloma Miller Furlong's Story of Why She Left
Saloma Miller Furlong has an amazing story. The little Amish girl on the cover of her memoir and the Smith College graduate on the back cover represent two worlds. These two photos illustrate a life journey that has covered, so far, a relatively short distance in time and space, but a huge one in world…
2010 in Review: 100memoirs.com Gets a CheckUp from WordPress
The stats helper monkeys at WordPress.com mulled over how this blog did in 2010, and here’s a high level summary of its overall blog health: The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads Wow. Crunchy numbers A Boeing 747-400 passenger jet can hold 416 passengers. This blog was viewed about 12,000 times in 2010. That’s about 29 full 747s. …
Home for the Holidays Part III: What Does Home Mean to YOU?
I have been thinking a lot about houses and the idea of home for the last month. Moving from Michigan to Virginia at age 62 has stimulated introspection. I am no longer at home in Goshen, IN, the place where I spent most of my adult life, or Kalamazoo, MI, the place that nurtured us…
Home for the Holidays Part II: The Soundtrack of the Journey
Our moving day was Wednesday, Dec. 3, 2010. We left Kalamazoo, MI, around 4 p.m. after the two moving vans had already headed east. Our first stop was with Stuart’s brother Hollis and his wife Marty in Ann Arbor. They toasted our transition with a champagne dinner. In the morning after a quick breakfast, they…
Things Seen: A Review of Annie Ernaux's Book from Lanie Tankard
My thoughtful friend Lanie Tankard, knowing that I was in the midst of that wrenching process known as moving, sent me another delicious review. I loved the idea of books as food that she borrows from Annie Ernaux. Her description of this book as an amuse- bouche was perfect, don’t you think? Hope it makes…