Happy Thanksgiving to all my friends and followers. It's hard to believe that I've enjoyed my 100th birthday last month and am still involved with life.

Having spent the last decade writing three memoirs about the main events of my life in the 20th century,  I'm now involved in efforts to share those stories with all the generations that have followed mine. Because those monumental events changed the world, and those stories help clarify their effect on  the people who are now creating their own histories.

Each day there are fewer people left to tell about what it was like to experience them. Soon we leftovers of those times will be gone too -- but we hope our memoirs will still be telling our tales to all the children and grandchildren who read our histories.

Well, I finally reached the long-awaited milestone. In mid-October I celebrated my 100th birthday. It was a monster celebration -- four of my five children, about half my eleven grandchildren, even two gfr

Why is it so hard to write a blog? It seems easier for me to write a whole chapter of a book than a couple of a paragraphs for one of my memoirs. Now that I feel too old to write any more books (stiff fingers --it would take forever)  want to tell the world about my trilogy of memoirs, Sharing my experiences is the best way I can imagine to help people more aware of the ups and downs of life.

I was impelled to put my memories on paper for that very reason. I learned the hard way how much history repeats itself, and how one experience reflects so many others and so helps us understand . our own lives. Because my generation lived through such critical times -- years of war, great depression, revolution -- times which changed the whole course of our existence, my stories may help us confront and endure similar changes. As our years go by fewer of us remain available to share our common histories. Having them bound in print comforts me to know they'll still be here when I'm not.

How many of us have been hooked on the Outlander series? Most of my family has, and we're excited just now because it's become a TV series as well. I have seldom had the patience to follow a series, but this time travel author uses real history so deftly that I feel myself truly involved in her characters and their dramatic dilemmas. I am so deep in her latest tome, which takes place during the American Revolution, that I almost feel myself there with her, in the Scottish Highlands in the 18th century. Fantastic research! She must have a busy team for it.

I think inventing a "real world" as this author does, is about as exciting a challenge as a writer can have. Talk about "creating history."  

Grandma Moses

On the TV evening news the other day I saw a great video about Grandma Moses, the remarkable woman who became a successful painter at the age of 76. She took up art when arthritis made her give  up the embroidery she enjoyed during her retirement. Because people loved her artworks  and bought them, she went on doing them until her death at 101, by which time she had produced nearly 1500 paintings, mostly from her memories of country life. 

 

As I listened to her story I was struck by the many similarities between her life and mine, especially when she said, “I just like to keep busy.” I too had raised five children, ran a home  and had a full-time job. Like Anna Mary Moses, I published a memoir at the age of 88, only in words instead of paint. once I saw it in print, I couldn’t stop for ten years, and produced two more books of autobiography, as well as a novel and a storybook for children.

 

But the works that mean the most to me are the three memoirs, because they explore a woman’s life through three of the most critical periods of the twentieth century, and  think they are contemporary accounts of those times we all lived through -- the social upheaval of the Russian Revolution, the economic crises of the Great Depression of the 1930s, and the desperate years of World War II. Those times changed our world forever, and only a few of those of us who lived through them are still here to tell what those lives were like.

 

I imagine that Grandma Moses, just as I do, believed that it’s never too late to tell the stories that so many have experienced but only a few have the words to share.  

Nana

Hard Choices

I've just finished reading an extraordinary  new book, Hillary Clinton’s “Hard Choices.” It covers her four-year stint as Secretary of State, and I am in awe of the range and productivity of those years as she ranged over the world (112 countries!) lending her personal touch to tough diplomatic problems and even harder human ones.

I was particularly moved by the last chapter, in which she talks about understanding that “new technologies are reshaping how we practice diplomacy and development, just as they were changing how people everywhere communicated, worked, organized, and played. The paragraph I quote was the most moving, as it envisions the hard choices we will have to make in the complex  world of the future.

“We discussed how these tools were in and of themselves value-neutral. They could be forces for bad as easily as for good, just as steel can be used to build hospitals or tanks and nuclear power can either energize a city or destroy it. We had to act responsibly to maximize technology’s benefits – while minimizing the risks."

          This book convinces me (as if I needed convincing) that Secretary Clinton is superbly fitted to be a fabulous president. Who else has ever been trained as a governor’s wife, a First Lady, a U.S. Senator and a Secretary of State?

          I hope she’ll run! And I hope I live to vote for her.

When watching the evening news I was amazed to discover that thousands and thousands of children were arriving in my country from Mexico -- without their parents! Crowded into an enormous space, with no visible adults to help them, how lost and confused they must feel. And a second look brought back the memory of my own childhood, when I arrived in America in a ship that had brought us across the ocean.

At least I was not alone. My mother was with me and my father was waiting to hug us when we landed. We had left my native Russia in terrible condition after enduring war, famine and revolution. But we were full of hope in the magic promise of America. And ever since then I have lived over  those dramatic days in my memory and known that some day I would write about them. Though in my busy life I only got it published in my eighties, the remarkable details were always clear in my head.

Reading about the stresses I faced in my book, 'Weather of the Heart,' gives the reader a sense of the challenges facing the poor Mexican children. Left in a strange country to cope with a new language, a different culture, my first school and new friends, I was an example of how they will fit into their new world. The sharing of  experience is  valuable in so many ways to the understanding of people's difficulties on being thrust into a new life.

The Complications of Blogs.

I was led to believe that Blogs are designed to simplify your life; yet every time I try to write in mine it only complicates mine. Yesterday I wanted to write a new post (Is that what each new entry is called? It doesn't sound right somehow.) and I couldn't find the orange pencil, so I gave up.  Today I was looking for something else on Google, and suddenly my blog popped up, pencil and all. Now I have to post one, not to waste the opportunity. But I feel as though my blog is controlling me, not the other way around, as I assumed it ought to be.

Probably some of my problems are caused by my age. In many ways I feel that I don't really belong to the current culture. Rapidly approaching my hundredth birthday in October, I have no sense of being at home in the current world of communication. So many channels are available to me that I am lost in their midst. So many people seem to claim my friendship or my attention or my experience -- some of them are already familiar -- old friends,former schoolmates and workmates, even my own family members -- while crowds of strangers turn up unexpectedly, asking me to 'friend' them or 'twitter' them or any other new kinds of relationships. And in the middle of my efforts to reply, the screen changes to some new program or offering and I lose what I've composed.

Oh, for the simple life of my youth! I remember so many advances which we all welcomed with delight, so obsolete now that it's hard to remember life without them. Yet that life was so much easier to live. How to find the happy medium between yesterday and tomorrow?

After over 90 years it's still a good story. When I was a little girl sitting on Papa's lap, I played with his mustache and fingers. I often noticed that his right thumb had a sharp ridge. "Why is your thumb so funny?" I asked him and he said, "That is what kept me out of the army. You can't be a soldier if you can't pull the trigger on your gun." Many Jewish boys did such things to avoid having to serve 25 years in the Russian Army. You may read more such stories in my memoir "Weather of the Heart."  

Back in Business

Once again I've neglected keeping up my blog, due to disappointment with all my efforts to create an effective connection with people who read books (or the new substitutes thereof.) But by now I've found some help from people who are not computer ignoramuses like me. So there is new hope.

My books are now available as E-books, as well as on my website and www.Book-Hub.com. The three memoirs are receiving reviews. which I hope will create interest among booklovers. I want to share my life while I am still living it, for it has much to help today's young adults understand their world, which evolved from mine. 

Once again the days  are slipping by without new blogs in them. When nobody seems to be reading them it's easy to become discouraged. But I will try to persevere in the hopes that someone will relate to my efforts to join this new global society. Just now I am nursing a bruised shoulder and my growing unstable legs. My daughter scolds me for not using my walker more. I know she is just trying to keep me from falling down, but I can't help  trying to hold on to the remaining scraps of independence. Apparently I am not going "gentle into that good night."

Now I must turn away from  my daily conflict  with my computer and try to Skype with a friend in Israel      -- I must admit that my ill temper with the machine does not keep me from being grateful for its daily miracles -- Pax

TO THE DEVIL WITH "READ ONLYS"

For two days now I have been struggling with this heinous program, wasting hours and hours, when all I wanted to do was download or print out a new roster of our HCW club membership. Whoever devised this inscrutable complicaton and inserted it into  computers to bedevil the lives of simple souls like me should be  transported into a complex maze in which he can wander forever. What earthly use can a rad-only be,  anyway?
I suppose there must be some subtle purpose for it somewhere. But why can't it be optional, at least? It wastes the time I could spend in friendly chat rooms and makes me throw up my hands in despair and turn my back on what was supposed to be a user-friendly computer.

FUTURE USES OF THE PAST

Because of my strong feeling that offering our own histories to today's readers will give them wiser perspectives on bettering their own lives, I have written three memoirs of my experiences in the most critical periods of the past century.

 As the country -- in fact the world -- stands teetering on the brink, trying to escape another major slump, my tales of living through the Great Depression of the Thirties becomes more and more pertinent. That was in my student days, when we learned a hundred ways of surviving -- even enjoying -- life with much  ingenuity but little cash.

 Now we become maudlin over old memories of dates spent on the Hudson River on summer evenings, when the ferry to New Jersey cost a nickel, no matter how many times you crossed. Or how we could see a Broadway matinee -- and lunch for a total of $1.05. Them were the days, as Archie used to say.

Had a lovely day yesterday. My writers' group (HCW) held their annual Book Awards party, and it was a  roaring success. Many members dressed up in fantastic costumes and awards were given in eight categories. I got one for my third memoir, The Whirligig of Time. Many kind and flattering speeches were made and I felt wonderfully cherished and even  admired -- nothing like it to perk up a threadbare ego. What a great spirit pervades this fellowship -- women and men; old, young and in between; natives and immigrants -- all imbued with a passion to string words together into ideas and feelings to share with each other and the world. Our second and fourth Thursday mornings together are precious to me; they warm my spirit. VIVA HCW!

COMPUTER WOES

Another morning wasted with computer glitches. No wonder I get discouraged ,  and throw up my hands in disgust. It's supposed to be so much easier to communicate now, but when I typed on my old trusty Royal, or even the electric IBM, at least the words stayed where you put them. This is my second try at today's Blog. The first one suddenly disappeared when halfway done. You never know when you might inadvertently push a button that control something lethal.

It may well be that these sudden outbursts of temperament had a big role in my repeated neglects of the network connections I had established. Even a new computer, which  I hoped would be easier to conquer, has only created new frustrations.

Well now that I've got my grumble off my chest, I might do better tomorrow. Today, time has run out. The other parts of my life demand me. At least I'm showing up.

RAINY THOUGHTS

After three days of rain, it's hard to think of cheerful thoughts to blog about. People are posting pictures of flooded  roads and rivers even here in our mountains.  where I'd never thought I'd see them.
With daily disasters shown on the news, my own problems seem very small by comparison. Yet while I live I must concentrate on how to get people to read my books, into which I put my life and experiences under so many stresses, and which I want to share with the world.
I'm reading others' stories and beginning to realize that everybody has a story to tell, and the help it gives others to share them -- how that gives us a deeper perspective ou own living. So I'm hoping I won't give up this time, but keep on blogging about my Russian childhood during the early years of the revolution, my college love story in the Great Depression years, and my fractured life during World War II.

Am I the oldest person who ever wrote a blog? Most probably not. I will be 99 on my next birthday in October, but it's amazing how many of us nonagenarians there are in the world today. The question is, why should all the younger people read what we write in our blogs? Reading our stories might help them understand how their world got the way it is now.  The memoirs that I wrote in the past ten years tell about my life during three of the most critical periods of the last century. They are described in my website:  norapercival.com.

Why We Write Blogs

Why is it so hard for me to write a blog? It oght to be a cinch after writing four books and editing two others. But I find myself stalled just as badly as when, like many writers, I would dry up during the writing of a book. Suddenly you find yourself finding excuses -- first I need to play three computer games, like an athlete doing his warmup stretches before a game begins. Or I need to look up something on the internet, usually something I might need three chapters later. Or anything to distract me from actually writing a blog, like the legendary sharpening of pencils before setting down to writing, back in the days when we used pencils instead of computers to write with. Why?

My best guess is that I'm discouraged by my problems in setting my books up to be sold via the internet, but also my inabioity to find an effective way to make internet users aware that they existe and of interest to readers in their field. When I sell books in local stores or fairs I do it by attracting passersby  to listen to my story, person to person. How can I reproduce this situation on the internet, so the story goes out and creates public interest .without my physical presence? I know it can be done, since many people do it successfully. I'm hoping some of them will respond to my blog and give me some good advice.

I feel so inept in this new E-world and Google country and Facebook friends and all the rest crowding my inbox. But I must learn to be fluent in it since my age forces me to rely on them  for telling the world about the five volumes I've created in the last ten years. The younger generations, in their search for instant everything don't know, or care, that I can remember and report the terrible years of the Great Depression that's haunting us now, and the chaotic forties when WW II changed all our lives in so many drastic ways, yet created a united effort that bonded our generation forever and now seems to be lost..

My trilogy of memoirs is filled with stories about the real events of the last century.  But  they are written and published and now must be marketed to find their niche in history. And there are so many people, young and old, who want to hear those stories. I only need to find the right links. My new friends on Facebook and Twitter and Linkedin and Goodreads and Dames of Dialogue and all the yet unknown readers who would love my books are out there in the great global wireless world. The real question is whether I'll live to reach them. How will I find the ways?

Visitors!!!!!! -

September is already here. What happened to summer? It feels like we never had one this year. You turn your attention away for a bit, and when you turn back, it's fall! Between the endless political talk and the Olympics and the US Open, and one thing and another, and the year has gone by with no attention paid to what should be the fun time of the year.  Come Oct I will have some special visits - helping me to note my 98th birthday!!!!