Just got word that my friend Lindy Bergman died. Lindy was a well-known art collector who found a way to continue living and loving her life after losing her sight. She was very smart and extremely charming, but you know what I liked best about Lindy? Her surprisingly wicked sense of humor. The frigid weather, […]

A writer in the Monday memoir class I lead worked for Life Magazine in 1963. Giovanna Breu was at the magazine’s New York office when legendary editor Richard Stolley was negotiating for the right to reprint stills from footage of the assassination filmed by Abraham Zapruder. The Zapruder film arrived at the Life Magazine office […]

Wanda Bridgeforth is 92 years old and has been attending the memoir-writing class I lead in downtown Chicago for seven years. She grew up in Chicago and her mother worked “in private family,” which means Mama lived at the houses she took care of. Wanda lived with one relative one week, a friend the next, […]

Here’s an understatement: I learn a lot about history by listening to the essays the writers in my memoir groups read out loud every week in class. Last week I asked them to write about a meaningful object they’d lost, broken, or destroyed, and then explain why that object had been so meaningful to them. […]

I’ve run across some bottles of wine with Braille labels on them over the years, and when I found out that the woman who’s been running programs for senior citizens at Renaissance Court ever since I started leading memoir classes there was retiring today, I thought a bottle of wine might be the perfect gift. […]