I was particularly intrigued by two of this week’s link roundup because they are different and somewhat unusual ways of unlocking our life stories. One article has to do with potato salad and the other our body scars. It got me thinking of the stories attached to my various scars. Do you think this could be the beginning of a best seller? 
- Our Scars Tell the Stories of Our Lives: “Sometimes they’re stark tales of life-threatening catastrophes, but more often they’re just footnotes to the ordinary but bloody detours that befall us on the roadways of life.”
- Life List: A Woman’s Quest for the World’s Most Amazing Birds: “By documenting the tension between the obligation to others and the obligation to oneself, Gentile has written a book as much about the life of women as about a woman’s life.” ~ Christian Science Monitor
- Metadata Tags for Photos (Windows XP): “Have you ever wanted a better way to organize your digital photos? If you use Windows XP you should consider using metadata tags.”
- Google Quadruples Historical Newspaper Archive: “Google announced last week that it has quadrupled its searchable archive of historical news articles, many of which are free to access. Additions include the Halifax Gazette (dating as far back as 1753, as shown below), Sydney Morning Herald, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, the Village Voice, the Manila Standard, The Nation (from Thailand) and others.”
- Memoirs on the Go and the Blurring of the Personal and Public: “…blogs are serving as a kind of “memoir-on-the-go,” one that allows for dialogue and also a large readership. … I believe the permeability between memoirs and blogging — and also practices such as “facebooking” — will, if anything, feed the memoir phenomenon:”
- Mapping Memories: Stories of Refugee Youth in Montreal: “… a collaborative multi-media project which aims to integrate documentary video, new media and personal stories to raise awareness around the situation of refugee youth in Montreal.”
- Potato salad: Family stories and secrets: “Quite frankly, it doesn’t matter if you use mustard or mayo, horseradish or pickles, potato salad isn’t potato salad without the memories tied to the well-loved dish.”
Photo by fdecomit
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You wonder about the potential for the stories attached to body scars to be the basis for a bestseller. What a world of possibilities this thought opens up! Consider, for example, what connections there might be between body scars and spiritual or psychological scars. Surely the strong feelings associated with a scar-leaving traumatic event must affect one’s view of the world and the choices one makes after the experience. Or how about the potential for scars to be indicators of a person’s values? I can still find the scar from the cut I gave myself the last time I shaved my legs, some 35 years ago. Right then and there I decided that bodily integrity was more important to me than conforming to some irrational standard of femininity!
Interesting thought, Dan.
@Pattie. Thanks for your comments. You’re right about scars being not only physical. I love your ‘mini’ story about shaving. I’m certainly going to include a question in my future interviews about the stories behind people’s physical scars.