Both Two Men Talking and the related site narativ are rather spare Web sites into which one must do a bit of digging to see what they’re all about. A press release on Two Men Talking explains the origins: > Murray Nossel and Paul Browde met in 1974 in Johannesburg … Continue reading
Category Archives: Storytelling and Constructing Identity
A Feast of Memoirs
The August issue of O magazine offers “O’s Memoir Feast,” eight “riveting true stories” introduced with these words: Tell me a story. Tell me your story. … Okay, talk to me, tell me who you really are. This is what we feel when we sit down to read a memoir. … Continue reading
Our Stories and More
Our Stories™ is a new project that encourages people to interview friends and loved ones, and to share these oral histories with others. Founding partners include UNICEF, One Laptop per Child, and Google. The idea is to create, share, and grow a global collection of personal stories collected through recorded … Continue reading
The Value-Added Memoir
Not long ago, USA Today ran a feature on memoirs about obsessions — such as the wife who vowed to have sex with her husband nightly for a year (somehow this one doesn’t seem all that obsessive to me), the couple that likes to vacation at sites related to atomic … Continue reading
Stories of the Departed
Monster.com founder Jeff Taylor got a bit of press when he announced that he was founding Tributes.com, “a central location to house online memorials for those who have passed on,” writes Marty Graham on Wired.com. Taylor’s idea is not revolutionary. Sites such as MyDeathSpace, RememberWell, SweetMemoriesSite.com, Celebrations of Life (which … Continue reading
True Confessions for the 21st Century
When my cousin/best friend and I were kids, we went through a phase in which we were utterly titillated by women’s True Confessions magazines. Truly, these magazines fed my early lust for stories just as surely as did the anecdotes in Reader’s Digest. The classic story, which we still remember … Continue reading
Story Resources Under My Nose
I continue to be amazed when I discover new story-related sites, resources, and blogs. After three years at this blog (though sporadically before this year), you might think I’d be aware of everything that’s out there. Just this week, I discovered Narrative Magazine. The publication’s mission statement says: Not since … Continue reading
National Life Stories at the British Library
What a treasure the British Library offers in its collection of National Life Stories. According to the Web page for the collection, “National Life Stories … was established in 1987 to ‘record first-hand experiences of as wide a cross-section of present-day society as possible’. … NLS’s key focus and expertise … Continue reading
Valuable for Its Story Prompts
I’m not big on recognizing sites that have costs involved — especially when the sites are dysfunctional — but there’s a way to get value from The Remembering Site without spending money. The idea of the site is to provide a template for writing life stories — and then charging … Continue reading
Are You More Than Your Personal (Hi)story?
I dabbled a bit in the Oprah cultural phenomenon around Eckhart Tolle’s book A New Earth. I gave up a little too quickly when the technology didn’t quite work during the first installment of the Oprah/Tolle Webcasts. I also didn’t really grok the first chapter of A New Earth. So, … Continue reading