Where is yours?

Above is my great-grandparents’ bungalow. Built around 1910 on Martel in Hollywood, south of Sunset Boulevard, its occupants weren’t from the hills – Hollywood or Beverly. They were ordinary folks who breathed the same gardenia-scented air as the ones who looked down on them from glittering heights. My stories are about them and a time and place that they thought of as paradise. The rest of my stories are about lives and places that tell the tale of this extraordinary country.

This is a practical guide on how to gather stories about your life and the lives of those with whom you have shared your journey using websites, documents, and living breathing human beings. It also explains how to get the stories down in a format that works for you, so that they can be recorded and passed along. Why do it? Because your stories are a part of the fundamental tale of our floating blue green planet. They matter.

Long ago, I was on a path to a career in journalism as a columnist. That dream was never fulfilled, however, as I chose a bend in the road that led to teaching, a blissfully fulfilling profession. I never stopped writing essays, however, sometimes freelance, annually for Christmas card audiences, mostly because a phrase will pop into my head and not let go until I follow it to The End. These then are my reflections on the mostly everyday moments in life that in the end mean the most.