True Stories Well Told

Friend Trouble

Posted on April 30, 2025 by first person productions

By Sarah White

This is the second post in a short series that began with a review of the book Family Trouble: Memoirists on the Hazards and Rewards of Revealing Family. In this post, I share an experience with “the hazards and rewards” of writing not about blood relatives, but the people who make up our chosen family–our dearest friends.

In 2010, I was establishing my personal history practice. I taught reminiscence writing classes, coached memoirists 1:1, and ghost-wrote for clients. I had a new product line in mind: helping my clients self-publish their life stories using the new print-on-demand (POD) services.

These were coming online in the 2000s following the digital printing revolution of the 1980s-90s. I’d been through all that as a graphic designer before my career pivot—I believed I had all the skills necessary to take a book from idea through manuscript to layout to print. (Spoiler alert: Good judgment should be among those skills.)

With these new services, you could print one book, or ten, or hundreds. The books you could order through POD were identical to the books you buy in stores. But I wanted to test this self-publishing workflow before offering it to my clients. What did I have lying around that I could publish?

In 2008 I’d developed and taught a workshop called “Write Your Travel Memoirs,” after writing my own about a spring trip to Italy’s Cinque Terre. The drama of that story came from the “hazards and rewards” that ensued when my husband and I engaged dear old friends to dog-sit for our elderly fox terrier while we were gone. (I serialized that memoir on this blog a year ago—you can read it in 10 parts, starting here.)

I’d taught the class online and recorded it—making a “how-to” manuscript from that material was easy-peasy. Plus I had the memoir itself, Finding Our Place in Cinque Terre, which I used as an example when I taught the class. Putting the two together, I had a 10,000-word manuscript. I prepared it for POD printing and ordered several printed proof copies.

I sent one to the dog-sitters. Now remember, every book created with print-on-demand looks exactly like a book you’d buy in a store. It’s made on the same equipment with the same processes, start to finish.

I had mentioned to our beloved dog-sitters that I was planning to publish the story, but I hadn’t shown them the manuscript before that book arrived in their mailbox. Identical to a published book. Which is what they thought it was. Available for all the world to read. They freaked out.

Here’s why.

In the opening chapter, I set up the major complication that would drive the story: We had been offered this trip as a gift for our 25^th wedding anniversary. But could we go?

Jim and I are round-the-clock caretakers now. Over the last year Fred has weakened and developed a limp. His needs are few … We’re aware we don’t have many years left together…. We tried kenneling Fred just once. When we went to retrieve him, the chorus of howls hit us too hard, and we never went back.

Now we want to spend ten days in Italy. We need a new solution.

House sitters. My old college friend Dave and his partner Elaine both work from home at a country crossroads an hour south of Madison. Might they enjoy a stay in our little cottage near the lake, with free high-speed Internet, premium cable, and dozens of restaurants nearby? With a cute little fox terrier as major domo?

Jon Franklin, author of Writing for Story, teaches that story structure demands a sequence of actions that begins with a complicating situation. That complication raises a problem that will hang there until it’s resolved, introducing tension and suspense.

In my Cinque Terre memoir, I ended each chapter of our hiking adventure with my desire to know how our dog was doing. I describe daily visits to Internet cafes where I find no messages from the dog-sitters, or find messages that are too brief, too vague. “Did they not understand,” I wrote, “that when I suggested they keep us posted, I was really begging for entertaining notes like a sentimental (and guilt-ridden) pet-owner?”

In the concluding chapter, I huffily recounted coming home to find our dog weak and our dining room table covered with prescription dog food and pill bottles. I focused solely on our jet-lagged annoyance.

What actually happened was that Fred had had a medical catastrophe. He became so stressed out by his abandonment that he required hospitalization, putting Dave and Elaine through an extremely traumatic experience. Which they keep to themselves, knowing we would insist on cutting our holiday short if we knew. This was valiant of them, and I failed to appreciate that.

Everything I’d written in the memoir missed the mark on acknowledging the terrible situation I’d put them in. After Dave and Elaine received the “published” book, we had some heavy conversations. I had a dark night of the soul. They agreed I could publish the story, but asked that I not use their real names. Of course, I agreed. And I added an Epilogue in which I wrote, “Slowly the realization worked its way through to me: I was the villain in this piece. Through my selfishness, I had nearly killed our dog and poisoned a friendship.” You can read the rest of my apology here.

The irony is that in the “how-to” part of the book, I included a section titled “Writing about living people.” In it, I wrote, “When you decide to put your work before an audience, consider the consequences.” I had failed to take my own advice.

Now I advise my clients to game out the “what ifs.” Show what you’ve written to the people you’ve written about, early on, and be sure they see it in manuscript form. Even better, read it aloud to them, face to face if you’re able to, inviting collaboration.

(And if offered a free dream vacation while you have an elderly pet, consider saying “thanks, but let’s wait on that until…”)

Dave and Elaine? Our friendship continues. They even became dog owners themselves, despite their trial by fire.

Posted in Book review, Commentary, Sarah's memoir | 2 Comments

Family Trouble: Memoirists on the Hazards and Rewards of Revealing Family

Posted on April 23, 2025 by first person productions

This is the first post in a short series. We begin with a review of the book Family Trouble. Next week, I’ll post a personal essay about an experience with “the hazards and rewards” of writing about loved ones.

As a personal historian, my work is all about helping people write their lives. I do it in a variety of ways—as a coach, ghostwriter, and reminiscence writing teacher—but regardless of the approach, one constant remains—family stories are going to be told. And when family stories are told, somebody’s going to have a different view.

I tell my writing students, “Write like no one’s looking over your shoulder. There will be plenty of time to pull your punches later, if it looks like something you wrote is going to get published. Don’t censor yourself before you have to!” But that advice will only get you so far, I discovered as soon as I began seeing a few of my own stories published. I’ll get back to that story. But first, on with the book review.

So I was delighted when Josh Feyen brought the book Family Trouble: Memoirists on the Hazards and Rewards of Revealing Family to my attention.

From the back jacket copy:

This volume navigates the emotional and literary minefields that any writer of family stories or secrets must travel when depicting private lives for public consumption.

Essays by twenty-five memoirists… explore the fraught territory of family history told from one perspective, which, from another angle in the family drama, might appear quite different indeed. In her introduction to this book, Joy Castro, herself a memoirist, explores the ethical dilemmas of writing about family and offers practical strategies for this tricky but necessary subject.

The book is structured in four thematic parts, each signaling a different stage or aspect of navigating ethical and emotional challenges in memoir writing.

Drawing Lines explores the boundaries memoirists must draw—between truth and privacy, between storytelling and betrayal. Where do you draw the line between artistic expression and familial loyalty?

In The Right to Speak, contributors consider the moral and philosophical right to tell their stories, especially when those stories intersect with others’. Themes include power dynamics, voice, and permission—who owns a story, and who has the right to tell it?

Filling the Silence centers on the silence surrounding family histories—whether due to trauma, taboo, or generational gaps—and the memoirist’s role in breaking that silence. These essays reveal how memoir can serve as a form of recovery, resistance, or reconciliation.

Conversations of Hope offers reflections on what happens after disclosure. These essays grapple with the aftermath—how families respond, how relationships evolve, and whether healing is possible.

Together, these sections map a journey: from the internal debates about what to reveal, to asserting one’s narrative agency, to confronting silence, and finally, to seeking connection or resolution through truth-telling.

I loved sampling different memoirists’ views on writing about family. I kept popping over to my library’s app to put a hold request in for another author’s book. What is more satisfying than a book that serves as a guide to many more good reads?

I have had personal experiences with that one! Here’s just one:

Decades ago, one of the first personal essays I published was about Winona Lake, the religious resort community where three generations of my family lived or summered, where my cousins and siblings and I spent many summer weekends in our childhood. The essay got published on a website for Hoosier authors of autobiographical narrative. One of my cousins found it through Google; she emailed it to my extended family. It offended my aunt, who said, “It’s disrespectful,” and pretty much never spoke to me again.

Which was fine, because in fact, I had always disliked her. But I tell this tale when I teach, “Don’t censor yourself before you have to.” Remember, there’s a thing called the Internet, and anything you publish can and likely will be read by people who know you. That can have consequences.

When it goes poorly—well, let’s hope the relationships you lose are with the family members you dislike. When it goes well, may you find out more about your family and your history—as has happened for me, and more often than the adverse outcomes.

Stay tuned for next week’s adventures in personal history.

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Election 2024 – November 6, 2024

Posted on April 16, 2025 by first person productions

By Fay McClurg

Thoughts after election day: was it my fault?

The Facebook ads from the Harris campaign had been threatening. I was being asked to imagine waking up on November 6 to the nightmare that d.t. won the election. Would I know that I’d done everything I could to keep this from happening? There were Kamala’s pleas: “We need your donation today. Not tomorrow. Today!” And: “Would you give $10 to ensure a Harris victory?” Of course I would! OF COURSE! So I chose a dollar amount and clicked ‘send’. I was sent a congratulatory message by the campaign: “You’re one of our top donors!” That worried me. The total I offered was modest.

I agreed to receive email messages about canvassing opportunities. A neighborhood team was impressively well organized. I committed to signing up voters at some farmers’ markets — but could never muster the gumption to knock on doors. If I’d gone canvassing in Deforest with Julia, or in Milwaukee with Tom, would January 20th be a day of celebration instead of a day of mourning? During the last week of the campaign, I made the decision to visit family out of state, instead of staying home to canvas. I didn’t want to miss my two year-old granddaughter trick-or-treating as a purple dinosaur-mermaid. Did my decision cost Harris Wisconsin?

Doom scrolling and tracking the polling numbers consumed more of my time than I care to admit. But — perhaps if I kept a very close watch, I could ensure the election outcome I wanted?

I was eager to be an election official for the City of Madison. I was assigned a shift at the polling place at my neighborhood school that started at 1 pm until ‘close’, when all votes had been tabulated. The busy-ness of the polling place was exciting, and a distraction from worrying about the outcome of the election.

After about 8 pm, I kept an eye on the election news, but decided to wait to absorb it until I was home, at about midnight, and could talk to my most stalwart friends. It wasn’t looking good for our team. I went to bed, put my head under the covers, and hoped that things might shift during the night.

My ringing phone woke me a few hours later. My daughter called, sobbing. She confirmed my fears and was devastated that the loss in Wisconsin tipped the balance. I got a message from a Canadian reporter I’d met in October, wondering about my reaction to the election news. My response: “devastated, horrified, terrified”. One of my dearest friends invited herself over for tea and mutual consolation. Her eyes were red from crying and from having been awake most of the night. She shared with me the apology she’d written to her daughters, grieving the world they were inheriting.

Within hours, my doom scrolling was replaced by ‘doom spending’ which is defined as ‘spending money to soothe fears about broader issues’. I bought a new tablecloth, two tickets for a local production of the Messiah, a garden ornament I’d been eyeing, and a new throw rug to add to my collection.

I finally stumbled outside in the middle of the afternoon. It was sunny and mild for early November. The golden hour came early.

My yard needed raking. The rhythm of the task was soothing. My neighbor, Beth, was outside cleaning her yard, too. Although we’d been neighbors for years, our longest conversation was just two weeks prior. As election officials, we’d been paired together to collect early-cast ballots from the fire stations. We talked as she drove us. Off the record ,we quickly established that we had the same hopes for the election ahead. I learned about her daughters who were just starting college. She expressed her condolences for a recent death in my family. We talked about an elderly man that she’d just met. He’d voted for Republicans in every election of his long life. But he could not abide the candidate at the top of the ticket, so would cast his vote for Harris. That had given us both some measure of hope.

On this day — after the election — we had to look for hope in new places. We knew we would have to take care of each other and look out for those who’d be left behind. With her help, I finished bagging my leaves as we prepared for winter.

Fay’s writing has consisted of journals, heartfelt letters to friends and family, eulogies of loved ones, and essays in high school English class. Over two years ago, she happily discovered Guided Autobiography as a way to capture some of her life stories. Fay is a retired social worker in Madison, Wisconsin, where she raised her family.

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Eye of the Beholder

Posted on April 10, 2025 by first person productions

Today I offer Renee Lajcak’s essay, read by the author. Why? Because Renee writes sometimes to be read, and sometimes to read aloud, because she enjoys performing her pieces. “There’s a difference in how I write for spoken word,” says Renee. “I use shorter sentences, more repetition. On the page, you can be more abstract. For listeners, I keep it visual, ‘in your face’.” She enjoys having some control, through her stress and intonation, over how her audience (readers transformed to listeners) takes in her stories.

By Renee Lajcak

After class in Indonesia, I asked one of my English language students why his teeth were so beautifully white. He said that in his village, they would polish their teeth with “crushed brick”. I don’t know how that worked, but it sure did. I was surprised by the teeth of most Indonesians seeing that they ate a lot of white rice, fruit and sweets. In fact, when you bought something at a shop and got change, instead of small coins, they often gave you candy.

My dental experience in Japan was a different story. There, it was very common to see teeth out of kilter or crooked. I assume part of this was due to the lack of good dentists in those days. In fact, one Japanese man, very relieved after a dental appointment in the States told me, “I think Japanese dentists like to cause pain.”

Those crooked teeth were so common that they eventually became a sign of beauty. Today, a woman or anime character with slightly crooked, fang-like canines is seen as “kawaii” or cute by many Japanese. The cattywampus teeth remind them of a cat or a bunny. Advertising would call this clever technique “brand image enhancement through repackaging”.

Culture clearly determines beauty. The first time I encountered this idea was with one of my very first students, a Laotian refugee. She told me, “Your big nose and white skin. Very beautiful in Laos!” I was taken aback that my oversized schnoz and my pasty winter skin could seen as signs of beauty. Sometimes Japanese women would admire my “high” nose and sigh disappointedly over their own small noses. This was a shock because I had always hated my nose growing up and secretly planned to get plastic surgery as soon as I was an adult. Finding out that it could be seen as something beautiful turned my self-perception on its head, or should I say nose?

Self-perception is a powerful thing. I once worked with an American teacher in the US who was very heavy, but she exuded strong self assuredness, sometimes lacking in American women of a certain weight. She said that confidence was due to living in Africa, where the males of the region adored her larger size and treated her like a sex goddess. Every woman should feel like a sex goddess at least once in their life. It is something that can carry you through the plain days.

Sexual attractiveness is definitely tied up with beauty. Marilyn Monroe and Cindy Crawford each had a beauty mark on their face that was seen as sexy. But moles are things that Americans often have removed, especially if they are on the face, large, dark or all three. However, this is not a universal idea. On one of my visits to Japan, I spent a lovely afternoon with a group of women eating Japanese delicacies and learning about the koto, their 6-foot long traditional stringed instrument. As we chatted, they started discussing the numerous facial beauty marks and moles on a very beautiful young woman. She was considering having them taken off, something that is less common in Japan, partly due to the fact that the national health insurance won’t pay for it. But there was another less practical reason. There’s a whole branch of fortunetelling that uses the placement of moles to determine good and bad fortune. The women were discussing which moles could be taken off and which should be left to insure future good luck. Beautiful? Ugly? Fortuitous? It’s all in the eye of the beholder.

What is beautiful will always be subjective and cultural, and can change through time. In the US beauty standards are expanding, allowing space for those with a variety of body shapes and skin. It’s a joy to see fashion models with birthmarks or with larger bodies or even of a certain age, like me. I hope that there may be less self-shame and more confidence as a result. As for me, even at this certain age, I’m still working on fully appreciating my big nose.

Renee is a newly retired English language teacher who has taught in several Asian countries but now enjoys her woodsy backyard the best. She loves the connections made through storytelling and teaching conversational English, but writing about memories allows her to go inward to contemplate the good, the bad and the ugly. But mostly the good.

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I Felt Good

Posted on April 2, 2025 by first person productions

By Josh Feyen

I felt good moving into your basement a few days after I graduated from high school. A family friend had lined up a painting job for me in Milwaukee, but I needed to find a place to live. You had a cool and dry basement, a twin bed, and a lamp—that’s all I really needed. After my first day of scraping, priming, and painting apartment units, you were the first adult to offer me a drink. We sipped Southern Comfort in your back yard under the blue evening sky and began to get to know one another as adults. We were single. We were drinking. And neither of us had any obligations to be anywhere else except with one another.

I didn’t know anyone in Milwaukee except a few other relatives spread across the city. After Grandpa died, you moved from your rural farmhouse to your smaller city house, and family gatherings shifted to other homes—though you did host my graduation party in your backyard because, for now, it was my backyard too. We kept one another company that summer. You didn’t care where I went, what I did, or how I spent my time. Yet you expected me to do my fair share of household chores–nothing more, and nothing less.

I found two photos from that era: left, me at the grad party that my grandma held for me in June, 1989 at her house; right, my mom and aunt with my grandma in the center.

We hadn’t discussed rent before I moved in, and you didn’t seem concerned about it. But I wanted to contribute in some small ways. I carried the new cat litter down into the basement and the used stuff back up. I mowed the lawn and trimmed the overgrown bushes. Just before I moved to college, we went shopping for a microwave for my freshman dorm room, and I asked which was your favorite color. You picked the white one, and back in your kitchen, I unboxed and pronounced it yours. It was your first one, which you then used daily to warm up your mid-morning coffee, long after the pot had cooled.

I left for college without the microwave but with money for my freshman year, some of which I spent on my own Southern Comfort. We reunited at family gatherings, knowing one another a little better because we had lived together. When I finished my freshman year, we decided the previous summer had gone so well that I moved back in for another three months. I started my own painting company, and I made better money. Knowing I owed you more than lawn care and a small appliance for rent, I painted your house. After work and on weekends, I washed, scraped, and primed the siding, then covered the 1970s sea green with a lovely light blue that you selected from my professional paint portfolio. I finished the job just before I returned to my sophomore year.

By the time I needed a place to live the next summer, my parents had also moved back to Milwaukee, and I lived with them. We continued to see one another at holidays, and I called once in a while to see what you were up to. We fell back into our familiar rhythm — you telling me about your soaps and the news headlines you found interesting, me now talking about the Film Noir movies I thought you may have seen and the Spanish literature I was reading. You didn’t always understand what I was talking about, but you listened just as attentively as you did when you babysat me when I was sick as a child.

Those conversations continued for several years, and you seemed ageless, as only grandmas can do. But everything changed the day you fell down the basement stairs, landing in that very room where I had slept. Severely injured, you could no longer live alone. Mom moved you from your little blue house into an even smaller and far bluer room in a nursing home. I visited occasionally, and when I departed for a year backpacking around South America, I stopped by to say “Hi” and “Adios.” I told you what I had planned for the year ahead, but you didn’t really get it; you could no longer track what I was saying, much less the countries I hoped to visit.

I had just finished a week-long trek in Patagonia when I got mom’s email that you had died. In her note, she told me about your last days, the funeral, and burial plans. I immediately called home, 7,000 miles north, mentally juggling logistics, time, and money to return for the service. She reassured me I didn’t have to come home for this; “You already did so much,” she said. “You lived with her, called her, visited her while she was alive. There’s no need to be here now that she’s gone.” I toasted you with a glass of Chilean Malbec—I couldn’t find any Southern Comfort. Then I hiked up a massive glacier, down into a cool valley, and into a wild alpine forest. As I walked, I told you about the bright blue of the ice, just like the color you chose for your house, and about the goofy penguin families I’d seen in Argentina—you would have loved their soap opera antics. I could almost hear your laugh, just like when we joked around in your backyard. And I felt good about that too.

Josh Feyen was raised on a farm in southwest Wisconsin, went to college in Milwaukee, lived abroad for four years on three continents, and now finds himself with stories to tell. In the middle of 2021, Josh set about writing 50 short memoir stories in his 50th year. Today, the main focus of Josh’s 50 in 50 writing journey is to share what he’s learned with his four teenage nieces and nephew. Josh lives in Madison, Wisconsin. Find his other blog posts for True Stories Well Told here.

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A Two-Week Immersion in Language, Culture, and Lifelong Curiosity

Posted on March 26, 2025 by first person productions

I had my first immersion in Italian culture when I traveled with Rotary International’s Group Study Exchange program in Spring 1991. Because of the intensity of that experience, (which I wrote about here), my language acquisition was rapid. However, it ran deep in some veins–the kinds of conversations you have while visiting Rotarians–and shallow in others. I have spent the intervening years intermittently filling the gaps and increasing my overall command of the language in its three modalities–heard, written, and the most difficult, spoken.

I contemplated revisiting my favorite city from that long-ago tour, Ascoli Piceno. I found out they had a language school. I spoke to its founder/director, Dottoressa Antonella Valentini, PhD., and a dream was born–to one day attend a program there to work on my ability to actually converse in Italian. Earlier this month, that’s just what I did.

For two weeks in March, I became a student in the medieval-yet-modern town of Ascoli Piceno, Italy, halfway between the Apennine mountains and the Adriatic coast.

Lifelong learning isn’t just about staying busy or padding a résumé. It’s about remaining curious, flexible, and open to surprise. Learning keeps the mind agile and the spirit engaged. Language learning, in particular, engages memory, logic, listening, and empathy—all at once. And when it happens through immersion, it engages the whole self.

The two-week special course offered by Accademia Italiana was timed to coincide with the town’s Carnivale season, a period of celebration when everyone—from toddlers to grandparents—gets into costume and goes out to see and be seen in the public piazzas. In other words: a perfect moment to be an outsider invited in. Antonella was our cultural guide, stopping individuals and groups and asking them to explain the significance of their roles. Ascoli’s Carnivale, she explained, was both less formal and more satirical than Venice’s elegant and better-known festivities. Any person or event in the preceding year that smacked of hubris was fair game for a Carnivale take-down, from the never-ending construction to the mayor’s publicity-chasing to patriarchy (represented by Barbies). (Here’s a link to a Facebook reel of the beginner class’s Carnivale walkabout).

Two Big Questions

I arrived in Ascoli Piceno with two questions that went deeper than grammar or “concordanza”—my nemesis, the fine details of agreement between parts of speech that Latinate languages like Italian requires..

First, I wondered: How do the elderly fare here? I’m courting the idea of spending my 70s—and perhaps my 80s—as an expat, and the city of Ascoli Piceno, population 45,000, is on my short list. I brought up the question for discussion in class, and what I learned was moderately hopeful. The cost of living appears to be roughly half what it costs me to live in the U.S., and access to healthcare is comparable. For those who need it, daily caregiving is available through hired badanti—professional caregivers, often from Eastern Europe, who live in or visit regularly to provide support.

The rhythm of life in Ascoli seemed gentler, the infrastructure manageable, for the elderly. I saw plenty of older people getting around with their electric scooters or rollators.

“Anziani” gathered across from the weekly farmer’s market to catch up and people-watch.

Second, I asked myself: could a reminiscence writing instructor find Italians interested in my classes here? Over dinner one evening I posed the question to Antonella. Her answer, though kind, was candid: “Everyone here has the same story. Their parents and grandparents were born here. They would find nothing of interest in writing their life stories.”

That answer surprised me—two siblings can grow up in the same household but experience entirely different families, as I’ve frequently seen in my writing class. But if I were to continue teaching, it would likely be classes for expats living in Ascoli, or more broadly, offering online workshops for people anywhere in the world.

A Day in the Life

Each morning, we gathered from about 9 to 12:15 for Italian language lessons. The curriculum balanced grammar, idioms, and plenty of play—proverbs, slang, and games that helped us build our confidence using the language.

My fellow students in the advanced class were generous in helping each other with suggestions to improve our language acquisition, sharing tips on apps and podcasts.

To practice using the Imperative, we had to coach fellow students to take poses from magazine pictures.

But the learning didn’t stop at noon.

Afternoons and evenings were filled with cultural excursions and shared meals. We joined the locals on Carnival walks through town, attended talks on Ascoli’s legends and history, dined with our teachers, and took part in two cooking lessons—one focused on the traditional Carnivale ravioli, the other led by a chef who shared the secrets to his pizza dough.

There was a riverside walk with a local ethologist to learn about the region’s flora and fauna. We explored the seaside town of San Benedetto del Tronto, accessed by bus, and visited a ceramics workshop. Outside of class, we had time to shop, relax, or simply soak up the street life over a cappuccino or gelato in the piazzas.

Lessons Beyond the Classroom

Speaking a new language in real life, whether it was “shopkeeper Italian” useful for ordering coffee and asking directions, or diving into the deep end of vocabulary to discuss comparisons of home cultures —was humbling. It required listening closely, responding slowly, and accepting imperfection.

There was joy in that struggle. We didn’t just learn words—we felt our way into a culture that is tactile, expressive, and rich with history. While my “concordanza” was not noticeably improved by the program’s end, my motivation to continue acquiring this beautiful, musical language had deepened.

When Learning is a Shared Table

Some of the richest moments came over meals. Whether making fresh ravioli side by side or sharing seafood at a coastal trattoria, these experiences blurred the line between teacher and student, between learning and living.

One night, as we sat around a long table with as our guest, an author and friend of Antonella’s in town to talk about his newly released book, I realized: this is what lifelong learning looks like: Not a classroom, but a community. Not a test, but a conversation around shared interests.

That’s Lamberto Ciabatti at the far end of the table, author of the new book “Ultras” about Italian soccer fandom. Dr. Valentini, far left.

This two-week immersion in Ascoli Piceno reminded me that learning doesn’t need to be lofty or abstract. It can be joyful, messy, and grounded in real life.

Here’s what I’ll carry forward:

Comfort with discomfort. Being bad at something is daunting—but invigorating. Growth happens outside the comfort zone.
Curiosity is contagious. Our group fed off each other’s energy, discoveries, and small triumphs.
Connection is the goal. Language is just the vehicle. What we’re really learning is how to understand each other.
Reflection shapes the path. The right questions can turn an experience into insight.

Lifelong learning isn’t just a habit. It’s a way of living. And in Ascoli Piceno, I found a place—and a pace—that made me want to keep going.

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Simple Pleasures

Posted on March 19, 2025 by first person productions

These brief posts from my vacation–with fewer words, more pictures–will continue throughout March.

Sarah enjoying what Ascoli has to offer…. Great food.

Looking back after a long climb up to near the highest point in Ascoli Piceno

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Accademia Italiana, Ascoli Piceno, Italy

Posted on March 13, 2025 by first person productions

These brief posts from my vacation–with fewer words, more pictures–will continue throughout March.

Group dinner at Caffe Lorenz in the main Piazza del Popolo. Our fearless leader Dotoressa Antonella Valentini far left, her friend & colleague, author Lamberto Ciambatto at head of table.

Scenes from immersion in an Italian language school. Luca, our teacher, had us mastering the imperative by directing each other to assume poses from magazine pictures. Harder than it sounds! But fun!

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Carnevale, Ascoli Piceno, March 4 2025

Posted on March 5, 2025 by first person productions

This is the first in a series of brief posts from my vacation. Expect fewer words, more pictures, throughout March.

Ascoli Piceno’s Carnevale is not “elegant” like Venice, but more about social satire. Prizes are awarded for best solo, up-to-3-person team, and large groups. A large team of Barbies marched with their “social media manager”, each box with a pro-feminist slogan on their box. A good idea, well-executed–the parade equivalent of “true stories, well told.”

Sarah White

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‘Tis Better to Receive

Posted on February 26, 2025 by first person productions

By Faith Ellestad

*Image generated using DALL·E by OpenAI.*

‘Twas the season of festivity at work. Our normally quite ordinary, no-nonsense medical department had suddenly transformed into a wonderland of red, green, and silver. Trees sprang up. Office doors sported wreaths and bells. A menorah appeared on a library bookshelf. The iconic lounge skeleton rocked a jaunty Santa hat and sparkly red and gold bow tie.

‘Twas also the season of eating at work. Around mid-December, the Christmas spirit began to emerge among the faculty. Doctors and clinicians would arrive in the lounge with giant boxes of chocolates, petit-fours, and kringles for the secretaries (and anyone who happened by) to share. In return, we support personnel kept bowls of hard candy and mini-bars at our desks for medical staff consumption. Weight was gained. Spirits were bright. Celebrations were expected.

Who would be in charge of these holiday extravaganzas? The secretaries, of course. It was an unwritten but widely realized element of our jobs. Fortunately for those of us less gifted at organizing festive events, there was an enthusiastic subset of support staff who were positively gifted in the social graces and loved nothing more than arranging galas. Their finely-honed festivity radar left no occasion uncelebrated. Each month, our secretaries’ meeting devolved into some type of conviviality, always along with the request to chip in a few dollars for a gift.

We celebrated birthdays, threw baby showers, acknowledged welcomes and farewells. Once, we even had a shower for someone’s new puppy, complete with dog toys and “Puppy Chow” Chex mix. The plus side of all this gaiety was wasting work time, but for me, the minuses added up. My job was scheduling which obviously involved time management. These “meetings” left me scrambling to catch up. Furthermore, the group’s self-appointed planning committee (apparently those who had endless free evenings to enjoy the culinary arts) had agreed on everyone’s behalf, to a rotating treat schedule for the secretaries’ meetings. As with the frequent requests for donations, I found this irritating. A mediocre and incurious baker, with two school-aged kids and a husband who worked evenings, I had little time or inclination to toss together some delicious fruit-forward pie or crisp. Ergo, I would invariably show up bearing a beat-up 13 x 9-inch Teflon-degraded aluminum pan of Betty Crocker extra fudgy brownies and a dog-chewed spatula for serving. So lame. To my co-workers’ credit, however, there were never any leftovers, and no one judged. We were tuning up for that most wonderful time of the year.

By the time December arrived, the party planners’ excitement had reached a fever pitch. The holidays were upon us and it was anyone’s guess what we might be volunteered to do.

One memorable year, the ladies, overwhelmed by enthusiasm, offered to organize a department-wide Holiday pot-luck. Doctors, nurses, and probably some employees from other departments, were delighted with this idea. Food was King in our department.

“Hang up a sign-up sheet,” they said.

“I’ll bring something. Sounds like fun” they said.

Soon, an extensive sheet suggesting categories of entrees, desserts, and sides appeared at the reception desk, easily available to all, and shortly after, most of the support staff had signed up, along with a couple of nurses.

“Wow, that’s coming right up,” one of the doctors told me.

“I might be on call that day. I’ll throw in some money for food, though.”

The cash idea caught fire immediately.

Within a couple of days, the women whose brilliant idea this was, had amassed a few offers of dips and chips, numerous sign-ups for Christmas cookies, and a couple hundred dollars. With no entrees or sides in evidence, but an increasing influx of money, we decided, at a hastily called secretary meeting, to have Chinese food catered with the donations. No mess, no fuss. That was the end of the ill-conceived pot-luck idea and we never looked back.

Unfortunately, two years earlier, this very group of irrepressible party animals had initiated an unbelievably time-consuming plan involving a Secretary Holiday cookie AND gift exchange for our December meetings. I thought maybe, after barely escaping disaster with the pot -luck, we would just skip the secretary thing this year. But no. You don’t mess with tradition. We hashed out the details.

“How much are we supposed to spend on the gift?” I asked Scrooge-ily, feeling the pinch of limited resources.

“Oh, maybe five dollars?” someone suggested.

“You can’t get anything good for five dollars. Let’s make it ten,” suggested Bev, the woman with whom I shared an office. Bev was a substantial woman with a booming voice and a very assertive demeanor.

So, ten dollars it was, plus a batch of home-baked cookies. No cheating with store-bought stuff.

I arrived at the meeting on the designated day with my wrapped present and a hastily prepared yet delicious batch of spritz cookies. Time spent? About eight hours to shop, select the gift, wrap it in last year’s Christmas paper and slightly crumpled red stick-on bow, (you can’t remember everything), buy ingredients, and prepare not one but two batches of cookies because once the kids caught a whiff of almond spritz, I couldn’t not make a batch for them.

As the year progressed, our support meetings had become pretty desultory. We generally didn’t really have that much to discuss, and mostly complained about our workloads, but the December meeting had a more upbeat vibe. Most of our bosses had been pretty generous with the Christmas gifts, so there wasn’t much to whine about, and the cookies did look festive on their holiday plates. The variety was impressive. John, our only guy Program Assistant, and his wife had made Babka, much fancier than my spritz or Linda’s thumb-prints, but everyone’s efforts were equally well-received. We traded cookies and munched companionably.

It was time to exchange the gifts. John and I had gotten each other’s names in the draw, so we swapped. He opened my Gimbel’s ornament, and I opened his Macy’s ornament. And so it went. Almost everyone had come up with the same idea. Ornaments or Christmas knick-knacks had been the popular choices.

Laura: “Ooh, pretty!”

“I love it” from Dianne

Janie: “That’s gonna look great on my tree.”

“Oh good. A calendar!” Someone was thinking outside the box on that one.

I got a “cool” from John.

Etcetera.

“Oh thank God, we’re almost done,” I rejoiced silently, aware my assignment schedule was already late and getting later.

Just Bev and Kristin were left.

Kristin opened Bev’s first. An ornament. Who would have thought? “Thank you. Here’s mine.”

Bev reached for Kristin’s package and ripped off the wrapping.

“What the hell is this?” she yelled, outraged, holding up a cardboard circle covered with magic-markered elbow macaroni and stick-on stars. “I thought we were supposed to buy something!”

Kristin started to cry. “My kids made it. They worked really hard.”

Bev wasn’t heartless. “Oh, I didn’t know you had little kids. How old are they?” she asked Kristin, clearly picturing the pre-schoolers laboring over their masterpiece.

“Oh yes. Maggie and Mollie. Kristin sniffled tearfully. They’re eight and ten.”

Bev snorted, picked up her plate of cookies, set the ornament on the conference table, and stalked out, glaring at Kristin over her shoulder. Laura rushed over to comfort the distraught Kristin and I headed back to my office to commiserate with Bev who was still seething.

Eventually, somehow, détente was achieved between the combatants but our now bi-monthly meetings had become brief and pointedly business-oriented. The party was over.

Faith has been writing to amuse her family since she was old enough to print letters to her grandparents. Now retired, she has the opportunity to share some personal stories, and in the process, discover more about herself. Faith and her husband live in Madison, Wisconsin. They are the parents of two great sons and a loving daughter-in-law.

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