Legacy MattersI'm one of those that believes in Christmas but decries much of the materialism that surrounds it. While I understand that many people earn their livings in creating and selling products for Christmas, just how many scarves and soaps on a rope is more than enough?
Why not plumb your memory to create a meaningful story for the people you love. The beauty of the digital world is that you can create something and give it away while keeping a perfect copy for yourself. This is the way to increase their personal and family archives as well as your own.
I've just discovered Foundation for a Better Life which I write about in my Business of Life blog. There is a section of stories that you could well use as examples. Take the featured story about a sister's wedding called Class and Grace or a son appreciating his mother in Ambition or the story of an aunt in Character. (These stories don't have permalinks so click on the bar on the bottom. )
Or you can pull out some of your old family photos and tell a short story to send to all your relatives. They most likely don't have digital copies of the old photos and will really appreciate not only the photo but also your take on it or your story. I've written about this earlier in Your Take on Family Photographs.
Ronni Bennett does this beautifully in Little Ronni, Ronni and Mommy, Army Air Corps Daddy, Great Grandma and Ronni and Daddy and Mommy. She's developed a few rules for herself because she originally published them on a photolog that provide some good guidelines in telling a good story.
1. I limited myself to one photo per day (many fotologgers publish
several a day) to give me the leisure to consider/ponder that
moment/person/episode in my life. And some took on new meaning for me,
as readers left comments, that I wanted to think over.
2. Captions had to reveal something more interesting than names, places
and dates.
3. Captions had to tell a whole story with a beginning, middle and end.
4. Captions were limited to no more than six published lines - it was on
a PHOTOlog after all, not a weblog. But this sharpened my thinking and
writing and I think it is more successful than if I hadn't made this
rule. I stuck to for all but about half a dozen photos.
5. Captions and photos could not harm or embarrass the people in the
photos (it was and is public, so that was important. Private collections
wouldn't need to be bound by this. I had to leave out a ton of great
stories to stick to this rule ;-)
6. Unless the subject of a photo is a publicly-recognized person, only
first names were used, but those names are real. I violated that a
couple of times, but for a good reason and to no consequence.
7. Within the limits of fallible memory, the captions had to be
emotionally honest and factually true
8. Above all, it had to entertain.
Posted by Jill Fallon at November 17, 2004 2:08 PM | Permalink