Stories

                         Thinking about launching your own blog?
                         Here's some friendly advice: Don't.
                         And if you've already got one, pull the plug.
                         ~Paul Boutin, Wired Magazine, 10.20.08

And what happens to the stories then? Some blogs are political, some are commercial, but the ones I like best are the ones with stories. Stories, lots of stories, stories nearly everyday. A good storyteller tells true stories, and all of them true, but not all of the truth. A good storyteller knows what to leave out. Some stories have a happiness so wide that words fail, and some stories have a sadness so deep they cannot be told in truth, not even a small part of the truth...

We were in the car, 2 a.m. under a starry sky coming back from the roadhouse. As the road rolled on and on so did the stories, stories about Iceland, stories about work and school, stories about concerts and musicians, stories about blogging...

The next afternoon I was at the kitchen table, going through a pile of children's books, getting them ready for shipment to some young readers. She came into the kitchen for some breakfast and started looking through them. More stories came then, stories of her childhood, triggered by the books...

Later that day we were in the car going downtown, she had booked a hotel room in the entertainment district for her last night in Minnesota. More stories were told on the way, stories about the city. "It's like being in a movie" she said as we passed through some of my old neighborhoods, all of it new for her, all of it old to me, those weary streets which held for me so many stories of frustration and disappointment...

I left her at the hotel, the next day she would be back on the Amtrak to Chicago to witness a really big story, and then she would travel further east, discovering more of America, uncovering still more stories, stories to write down later and share with us in her blog. All of them true, with just a little pinch of salt for flavor.

Don't ever stop. Don't pull the plug. The world needs your stories.

Diolch yn fawr iawn, Annie.