Yesterday we went to my husband’s grandmother’s funeral – sad to say goodbye but the family were also able to celebrate her life and the memories they had with her. I didn’t know her well but she was always lovely and friendly towards me.
On Friday night when we were spending time with his grandfather, I picked up a book she’d written and given copies to her children and grandchildren a few years ago. It was her life story and while I didn’t get to read too far in, her childhood tales were fascinating. I got to know a little about a time in history I can’t really relate to – for example, they had no power when she was growing up.
I began wondering if anyone is using blogging technology to document their life’s memories in a retrospective way – not as in a living journal of current events. I’ve found some sites, such as The Remembering Site which help people put togther their memoirs using a series of questions to help get started writing.
Have you come across any blog where people are slowly writing their life story – using retrospective blog post dates?
Tools such as WP2PDF enable exporting to PDF format which could be easily printed when you’ve finished writing up your memoirs. Blog comments could be used by family members to ask questions about the stories or events being described – so that the book writing is a collaborative and interactive experience. Wordpress pages could be used for information on people and places mentioned in the memoirs, along with the auto links plugin to point people to those pages as appropriate.
A free support community around these blogs could be born, with tips on writing memoirs, helpful questions to get started and technical help. Wonder if anyone’s doing this?
your thoughts
Darren
one of the ideas I’ve had for a year or so now is putting together a blogging tool to offer to aged care homes that would help their residents to do just this.
it’s always been in the ‘one day basket’ but I think it could be an interesting project.
Anne
That’s a terrific idea. I understand that life review/therapeutic reminiscence is quite popular with those who work with older people and people close to death. I would love to read a retrospective blog-style memoir by my grandmother but she is far gone with Alzheimer’s and many of her precious memories and stories are now lost.
I imagine when the baby boomers get closer to their final goodbye they will spend lots of time and money telling their life stories.
Serge Lescouarnec
Rachel
Condoleances
I sometime write about things I have fond memories of not just current events.
I also just uploaded a logo I had someone design for my blog.
After that I played with the color theme. Not sure it will stay like that.
Feel free to share your comments on these experiments.
Take care
Serge
Biz:
http://www.njconcierges.com
Blog:
http://www.sergetheconcierge.com
leisa
your post made me think of the initiative, a few years back, for local libraries (in NSW, Australia this is) to promote and capture oral histories of people in the local community.
I’m not sure whether this has died away… It never really seemed to get off the ground in a big way, although the stories that were captured were amazing.
One of the problems was that capturing and transcribing these histories was time consuming and sometimes technically challenging, and required equipment that wasn’t exactly cheap.
Perhaps if they shifted focus to promoting capturing history via blogging, they’d be more successful. The libraries already have a ‘free’ internet infrastructure, so a blogging platform that made the process simple and helped link all the stories together would be amazing.
Actually… now that I think of it some more. I’m sure I saw something like this on a library site in Queensland (can’t find the link now unfortunately). They were using video as well.
Veronica
Actually the ONLY reason I wanted to start a blog was to write up things from my life retrospectively. And yes, I had the idea that comments could be used by my friends and family to get to know what I had been up, ask questions, give their own side of the story… I’m starting by posting strange and funny stories from my past two years in India because I wanted it to be a lighthearted, funny look at some of the struggles and challenges of studying in a developing country without sounding whiny. I think my friends abroad have no clue why I haven’t been in touch, or what I’ve been up to so this fills them in all and one go. And yes, I’m backdating the posts so that people can find out when they actually happen; I don’t expect people to think that’s when they were actually published.
I am also thinking about putting up some memoirs about my experiences in foster care, my year abroad in Spain, and my time as a nanny in Paris as well. I think all these things are interesting topics that people might be interested in and I think that talking about them retrospectively helps edit out the rambling and provide perspective on what I’ve experienced.
So, um…yeah. I think it’s a great idea. The problem I have with the way blogging tools work, though, is that I don’t like the way most of them automatically organize posts in reverse chronological order. I want my blog to read like chapters so that people can put each post in perspective. I really believe that they’re are situations I’ve been in and things I’ve done that are nearly incomprehensible without some background understanding of how I got there.
Interesting topic. I’m glad that other people are thinking about this as well.
Veronica
P.S. I came here bacause of your tutorial on how to install wordpress. I’d actually already done it, but I thought that your explanation was great and I’d highly recommend it to anyone.
Carrie Wigal
I think its a GREAT idea. I started a website around the subject a few years ago but have been toying with the blog concept for quite some time. I’ve just been trying to figure out how to make it happen.
I thought about doing my own blog about my own life and encouraging others to start their own blogs and helping them get started. It’s exciting to hear there is interest here in the subject. Unfortunately people think the only time to record your life memories are when you’re “old” (of course, how old is old?)…we should be writing them throughout our life, while the memories are sharp. I’ve found writing “reflectively” very inspiring & insightful…and you don’t have to be “old” to reflect on your life, just older than what you were.
Thanks for your post. I enjoyed stumbling across it.