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...

Read More

At dinner with friends, my husband mentioned Mad Men.  He’s been catching up on that old television series. Our friend shook his head. He couldn’t watch that series. There was nothing about the fifties and early sixties that he wanted to relive. The conversation moved on. Maybe it’s a sign of having really moved on because I was home getting dressed for bed before I realized what he meant. He was a black man starting his...

Read More

According to a recent US News report, 86% of the Boomer Generation believes family stories are “very important” and make a more important legacy than money. (see Family Stories, Not Money, Is Best Legacy dated May 21, 2012). The article by Phil Moeller (@PhilMoeller) notes that when people think about their estates and inheritances, they tell pollsters that passing along personal and family values trumps possessions. Generations...

Read More

The tenth anniversary of 9/11 has come and gone. It is one of those shared moments that each of us remembers differently. I was putting on my running shoes. The television happened to be on.  I  called my friend and told her a plane had just hit the World Trade Center. She started to ask where we were going meet for usual 45 minutes of exercise. “Turn on your television,” I told her and for the next 45 minutes we watched together,...

Read More

If someone in your family hasn’t reminded you of  The Great Depression lately, you haven’t been listening. I have an quilt that my mother found among some old things and gave to me. From the fabrics, I already know it was made in the 1930s, when everything, including fabric, was precious. From the workmanship, I know it was hastily made. Not all the pieces match. It’s a common pattern, thirty star blocks, predominantly yellow in...

Read More

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...

Read More