By Flora Morris Brown, PhD On the surface it seems writing your life story should be easy. After all, you’re the main character and all the experiences that make up your story are filed in your memory. And yet, most of us struggle with where and how to start. There are many reasons for that,…
By Laura A. Roser “I was born with a wooden spoon in my mouth,” Jennifer Lanzetti told me in a recent interview. “My parents didn’t have a lot of money, but boy did we have a lot of love.” In her teens, Jennifer was diagnosed with severe endometriosis. Over eight years and fifteen surgeries, she…
By Laura A. Roser Join Me in Mapping Out Your Life Last year my fiancé and I began planning our legacy together. A part of the process is thinking about important memories. But my fiancé, like many people, had never spent much time thinking about turning points in his life. It took a process of discovery…
By Alexis Dixon Alexis Dixon Presents the Notes to Our Sons and Daughters Project I heard my sister’s voice crying out on October 9, 2012. Though I have never met Malala Yousufzai, this 14-year-old Pakistani girl is part of my family and yours. That October, while traveling to school, this young advocate of universal education was shot…
By Karen Long Capturing and Preserving Moments of a Lifetime Sure, it was ridiculous to even try, but I was an outlier. I heard the dare as a personal invitation to be the exception. As a college student in Buffalo, NY, I took up photography as a hobby. But I had a lucky accident, sold an…
By Duncan Crary, Ferris Coin Keeping His Legacy Alive On June 5, 1917, Albany resident Henry Johnson enlisted in the first African American unit in the U. S. Army to engage in combat in World War I. On May 15, 1918, in the early morning hours, then-Private Johnson heroically fought off a German raid in…
By Randy Petersen Overlooked No More Alexander Hamilton was always a second-string founding father, in my view. He got his face on the ten-dollar bill, but he never had the stature of a Washington, Jefferson, or Franklin. Little did I know. Ron Chernow’s 800-page biography reveals Hamilton as a key player in the first quarter-century of…
By Arielle Nobile Focusing on Connections in Family Documentary Films I’m a strange bird in many ways, but one such way is that I started thinking about and imagining my grandchildren when I was 8 years old. (I also had a list of names for the 26 children I would one day have, but that’s a…
By Thornton Sully The number is now six. I started keeping count after three. That is the number of times over the years that the first words from someone, upon discovering I am a publisher and editor, are “I am not a writer, but …” and then the not-a-writer produces or informs me they have 300…
