Sharing Stories, Building Community
Jan Vaupel
Quickly now, without any help from Google or ChatGPT, tell me what the following items have in common: Cassadaga, Fairy Walks, hematite and carnelian, Warsaw’s Flying University, a 1903 Nobel Prize, the Paris Pantheon, Tho-Radia beauty cream, and the Radium Girls.
Don’t feel bad if you couldn’t find the common denominator. It will all be explained in Jan Vaupel’s latest “memoir”.
Al Carlson
I didn’t intend to write this story myself; I wanted you to do it. My plan for our Valentine’s Day issue was to share a song with you–a song I thought everyone knew–and ask you to tell the story behind its ambiguous lyrics. Like “American Pie” but on a much smaller scale. I hoped to publish at least two stories. One small problem emerged, though. Nobody I talked to had heard of the song. Nobody. Which led me to suspect I’d get very few responses to my challenge.
But we still needed something related to love for today’s issue. So, I accepted my own challenge and wrote the story. The song is “Ride On”, written by Jimmy MacCarthy and released on an album of the same name by Christy Moore. I’ll add a link to it at the end, but you’re welcome to use Google to have a listen before you read my story, if you wish.
Marilyn Myerson
“…and that adds up to 26 dollars”, sighed my mother Nancy. Worry lines played over the soft, beautiful skin of her face as she consigned thin dollar bills into little brown envelopes, each marked with its own label: “groceries”, “rent”, and so on. Those little packets were the kind you got from the bank, small enough to hide secrets, wrapped securely with rubber bands to keep their precious contents in place, and softened from years of handling.
In the background Ricky, the turquoise budgie bird, chirped along with the RCA Bakelite radio. Maybe it was Kay Starr belting out her 1950 hit, “Wheel of Fortune”; we could have used one of those.
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Bruce Gobioff
and a new talent
It’s a new year. It’s 2023. A year we once thought of as being in the far distant future, long after “2001: A Space Odyssey”. But now it’s here, and we’d better get used to it.
And we have the perfect story to start our year. As you can tell by looking in the upper right, Bruce Gobioff is involved. But he didn’t create this issue’s article alone. Who helped him? And how?
Theresa Sokol
Al Carlson
We like to end each year with an issue in which we look back at the stories, poems, articles, memoirs, and–well, whatever–that we’ve published during the past 51 weeks. And we have a staggering variety this time around.
We’ll share them with you in a moment. We want to stress that these are not necessarily “the best” articles in their category–just the ones that stood out for us personally, sometimes for very subjective reasons. We hope that you have a list of your own favorites.
Channeling our inner Bud Collyer, we shared several “true” stories with you in our November issues. Stories written, as always, by your fellow OLLI-USF members. “Honest Abe” honest. Totally truthful. Except when they weren’t.
We asked you to be our Kitty Carlisle, our Tom Poston, and tell us at the end of each issue whether the author had “told the truth” (and some had) or had tried to bamboozle you (which also happened). And as you voted, we kept score.
Using a complex mathematical formula (that I think we learned in fifth grade), we converted …
Many of us in OLLI-USF watched To Tell the Truth on television as we were growing up, and we (OLLI Connects ‘editors) recently invited our readers to participate in our own OLLI Connects “To Tell the Truth” contest. That is, we asked you to submit a story about something that you did or experienced and to tell it as a true story. Whether it was or not. We hoped to get four entries, one for each issue this month. We got even more, so most issues will have two tall (?) tales.
But, wait! There’s more! We want you–yes, you–to vote on the stories you’ll read here during November and tell us whether you think they’re true or false. Just keep scrolling down after the end of the story. You’ll see a “Comment” box. Type in “I think Pete’s story is true!” (or false) and click on Post Comment. We’ll see which of our writers fools the most readers and award them a “fabulous” prize.
We’ll begin with a piece by Bob Strozier who–while a young writer–interviewed the staff and stars of the show.
Marilyn Myerson
What in the world might induce a man to invent an instrument of torture? Might it be the lure of riches? Fame for innovative ingenuity? Deeply abiding bloodlust? Or might it be based on some kind of principle?
We are officially in the "spooky season." Tonight, little ghosts and ghouls will wander your neighborhoods on the hunt for candy and other treats. But Halloween's traditional roots belong to the observance of All Soul's Day, a remembrance of all those who have lived and passed on. Most recently this cultural rite was enshrined in Coco, an animated Disney opus focused on the "dia de los muertos." Today's blog features two stories featuring the inner human spirit with an emphasis on the contrast between good and evil. — Editor
Mary Bowers
My job as a medical equipment sales representative took me to a new hospital in Port Charlotte, Florida. It was late August, and the moment I stepped off the plane I was met with the smothering effects of the humid heat and tropical vegetation. Before I had left home in Atlanta there had been a report of an impending hurricane in Florida, but no one had mentioned it, so I assumed it had moved on to another target, as hurricanes will do.
I planned to take advantage of the trip to southwestern Florida to visit my friend Amelia who had recently lost her husband. She and he had retired to this area to raise horses, and it had been ages since I had seen her. We planned to get in a good visit over the weekend before I returned to Atlanta on Sunday evening. Read more
Marilyn Myerson
August ushers in the most active weeks of Florida’s annual hurricane season. Unstable tropical climate conditions triggered by warming seas have spiked record storm frequency and intensity over the last decade. We think it fitting to present a five-week series pertaining to weather and climate while you anxiously track the NOAA hurricane maps. A recent challenge issued to the members of the Imaginative Writing Crew yielded several stories on this topic, a new memoir marks the twentieth anniversary of Hurricane Andrew, and a mixed media report on the latest climate research will wrap things up at the end of the month.
We begin with Marilyn Myerson’s On Cloud Nine: The Calm Before the Storm –Editors
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