I’ve amassed a lifetime of stories. If I ever get around to writing my book, it will surely be full of stories. As I navigate the back nine and the Millennial and Z Gen make their mark, my personal storytelling and random thoughts and conversations with friends has propelled my blog posts. The reader or listener is my messenger. How my blog (my stories) makes the reader feel, and how they respond, becomes the core of my story.

I often find myself inserting a life experience into so many conversations albeit trying not to one-up an ongoing conversation. More often than not I find myself telling story after story. Life’s full of cerebral and visceral thoughts and decisions. My brain activates and crafts my own stories to accentuate the situation at hand regardless of a face to face, ZOOM or a good old fashioned telephone call. I keep the stories off of text messaging. Way too long.

I love stories, whether it’s one of my own, someone else’s, articles about people, or books about people. And then there is reading stories to the kids, or as of recently watching my daughter read a story at school for my grandson’s birthday. Stories stories stories.

I often talk about my love for nonfiction and the many books I’ve read, and on the flip side, I’ve come to love some great stories by the likes of Ernest Hemingway, Herman Hesse, Elbert Hubbard, Ayn Rand, Arthur Miller and Mark Twain. And then there is the long list of newsprint and magazine articles Iv’e amassed over the years. One of my favorites was brought to my attention by a friend about “The Devil and Roger Federer” by Janan Ganesh. We’ll get to those favorites later.

And then there are stories about the deceasedI. The life story of Paul Volkcer spurred my blog about him and my life since college. I recently read the obituary of a rather well known political advisor Joe Slade-White. Joe was a friend of another close friend, former Buffalonian Rick Reinhard. Rick often spoke about what a talent Joe was. Recently, Joe Slade-White’s obituary was actually a rather great story about him. The obit mentioned his handbook for success with his clients. I was able to find a copy and saw one of the key attributes of his handbook was the art of storytelling. 

And oh, moms are quite possibly THE best storytellers.