I’m on my way out tonight. Dinner with friends. I know how this will go. We will drink a little, eat a lot, and tell stories. At least once during the evening someone will say, “Did I tell you about ____?” I hope we say, “No, not yet,” because the stories that you have to ask if you’ve already told are the ones worth repeating. Dinner with friends equals wine, laughter and good stories. Stories are how we...

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Our son announced that he wanted to be an animator when he was five years old, sitting on the couch, watching Saturday morning cartoons. “Fine,” we said, thinking he’d outgrow it. When he was sixteen, still watching Saturday morning cartoons, and still saying he wanted to be an animator, we started to wonder—where do you send your kid to college if he wants to make cartoons?  The answer is California Institute of the...

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I gave my middle finger to a particularly deserving driver and my mother (sitting in the passenger seat) about had a heart attack. Her generation valued “being a lady.” Mine decided “ladies” don’t get noticed/make history/climb the corporate ladder/etc. etc. . . . you get the idea. As a child, I was not supposed to be dramatic. Drama was for others with fewer manners. That was usually phrased as “a less...

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In his newly released Autobiography Mark Twain argues that the usual cradle-to-grave account of one’s life makes less sense than our meandering memories . . . “The side excursions are the life of our life voyage, and should be, also of it’s history.” Mark Twain In other words, tell me, instead, about the day the circus came to town or how you fell out of the apple tree or why you like oysters. Blog this! Bookmark on...

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If you’ve ever been moved to tears on Saturday Morning listening to the life stories StoryCorps has recorded and played on NPR, you’ll love listening to the founder, Dave Isay talk about the project–how it was founded, what they’re doing, why we care about life recordings . . . [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hIdwAymdAa0&fs=1&hl=en_US&rel=0&color1=0x3a3a3a&color2=0x999999] Blog this!...

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“What makes us stiff,” my Tai chi teacher asked. He was looking at me, or, self-consciously, I thought he was looking at me. As a class, we were trying to learn the spin near the end of the short Yang form. It hadn’t been going well. “Fear,” he said, answering his own question. Besides feeling old and awkward, I was barefoot that day. Should have worn socks, I told myself, when I realized my feet were sticking to...

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