Magical Memoir Moments

An Old-Age Memoir: Somewhere Towards the End

Oddly enough, as a child I was enchanted by Grandma Moses.  I loved the fact that she made art out of many of the same experiences I was having growing up on a farm–gardening, sledding, planting, and harvesting. When she died in 1960, I was 12. But when she was born, Abraham Lincoln had not…

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Beach books? Memoirs Recommended by Readers

The CBC Canada Reads Book Club picked these ten memoirs as their top ten: 1. The Glass Castle: A Memoir by Jeannette Walls 2. A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier by Ishmael Beah 3. Iran Awakening: A Memoir of Revolution and Hope by Shirin Ebadi 4. A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius…

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Top 10 Memoirs: If You Show Me Yours, I'll Show You Mine!

Let me begin with an apology for slacking off on blogging this past week. I probably will continue a low profile until June 30th, after an important board meeting, and after I have finished a book review to send to Christian Century. But how lovely it would be if we together could make some progress…

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Summertime: A Single Metaphor Mini-Memoir

Summertime and the leaves are green and the sky is blue! It’s the season of childhood and freedom. I remember summers long ago–bare feet, walks in the creek, kick the can and hide-and-go-seek.  And all the fresh fruit and vegetables straight from the garden or the market. In the summer life is one big bowl…

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100Memoirs.com Reaches 100 Posts: A Mini-Memoir

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…

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Top 100 Memoirs: Which Ones are Essential?

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…

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Beautiful Sentences Contest Winners: Toujours Bon Appetit!

The poet Keats, at the age of twenty-four,  penned these immortal words, ‘Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.’ I thought of them often as readers and I struggled with how to evaluate the many different kinds of sentences entered into the contest to find…

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Iran? Why Iran?

During the last month Iran has consistently shown up on the top of the list of readers of this blog outside the U.S.  I am curious about the 13-20 readers who evidently come here regularly.  To my knowledge I have no close friends  living in Iran.  I would love to hear from some readers in…

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Beautiful Sentences Contest Entries: Please Vote for Your Favorite One

Well, what fun it has been to see the contest entries emerge in the last week. Eleven readers responded, some with one sentence, and some with several.  I had great plans to find a polling widget and install it on this site to make tracking easier, but I think the numbers are small enough that…

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Memoir as Potential Social Movement

Last Friday, The Kalamazoo Gazette published an op-ed I wrote. Its conclusion contains the revolutionary idea that if all of us finished the tasks (see below or click link above) we need to accomplish before a “good” death is possible, we would have years to live free of the fear of death and thus could…

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