I've decided to write up some of the more interesting situations from my life, and my parents' lives. There are a lot of adventures to pick things from: my father's life of homesteading, first on the prairies, then in Northern Alberta, and then going blind, marrying, raising a family and farming. And my life on the farm, then working in lookout towers, foolhardy attempts to deal with my anxiety, hitchhiking in the 70's around North America and Mexico, mountain backpacking, which preceded backpacking from the coast of BC to Thunder Bay, canoeing from Calgary to Quebec City, bicycling from Thunder Bay to NFLD, the married life, the adventure of learning to see through the eyes of women, also of working with people with disabilities, and, probably the biggest adventure of my life, that of a shy person venturing out into the social world as a form of therapy, successful this time, and, oh yes, the adventure of life itself.
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I will not be writing it in chronological order. The stress of having to write an entire chronological history from beginning to end would no doubt stop me before I began. No, I will write a story whenever I get inspired to write it, about whatever situation gets me going, no matter when it actually happened. Doing it this way has a number of benefits, aside from making it fun for me. It will also be much more fun for you. You won't have to read this endless history. Instead, each story will be preceded by a very short paragraph setting it in its place.
Another benefit of doing it non-chronologically: Most of the dross of life will automatically be skipped, leaving only the pure gold. My memory has already done that job, de-emphasizing the boring parts, so I will just jump to wherever my memory wants me to go.
But THEN it will be organized into its chronological place, so anyone who wants to can read the stories of that particular adventure in chronological order, to the extent that they have been written by then.
This is how: From here, on my Facebook page, they will go to my website blog: http://www.londonpoetryopenmic.com/stan-burfield-blog. The blog is like this Facebook page in that everything disappears down into the past, but I will be able to organize the stories from there, either in the blog's sidebar, by entering the titles and links in chronological order there under their main headings, or by giving each heading it's own sub-page. Not sure yet. Probably the subpage idea, because the sidebar would eventually extend from here to China.
But first I must bring the blog up to date. Last winter I began losing interest in re-posting to it the blurbs I had written here. So I will get that done as fast as I can. Also, I will go back through the blog and gather up and organize under their proper headings any appropriate stories I've already written.
3 Likes Some great comments:
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I will not be writing it in chronological order. The stress of having to write an entire chronological history from beginning to end would no doubt stop me before I began. No, I will write a story whenever I get inspired to write it, about whatever situation gets me going, no matter when it actually happened. Doing it this way has a number of benefits, aside from making it fun for me. It will also be much more fun for you. You won't have to read this endless history. Instead, each story will be preceded by a very short paragraph setting it in its place.
Another benefit of doing it non-chronologically: Most of the dross of life will automatically be skipped, leaving only the pure gold. My memory has already done that job, de-emphasizing the boring parts, so I will just jump to wherever my memory wants me to go.
But THEN it will be organized into its chronological place, so anyone who wants to can read the stories of that particular adventure in chronological order, to the extent that they have been written by then.
This is how: From here, on my Facebook page, they will go to my website blog: http://www.londonpoetryopenmic.com/stan-burfield-blog. The blog is like this Facebook page in that everything disappears down into the past, but I will be able to organize the stories from there, either in the blog's sidebar, by entering the titles and links in chronological order there under their main headings, or by giving each heading it's own sub-page. Not sure yet. Probably the subpage idea, because the sidebar would eventually extend from here to China.
But first I must bring the blog up to date. Last winter I began losing interest in re-posting to it the blurbs I had written here. So I will get that done as fast as I can. Also, I will go back through the blog and gather up and organize under their proper headings any appropriate stories I've already written.
3 Likes Some great comments:
Koral Scott, Yvonne Maggs and Frances Sullivan like this.
Larry Burfield Sounds great Stanley. At our ages a lot of special memories come to mind, and not in any order. I have made books for each of my grand children and the last one was 157 pages, and I continue to make updates as my mind suddenly remembers some moments. In these books is the articles your Dad wrote for Centenial books on history of the prarie life, and then homesteading near Smith.
Like · Reply · August 27 at 3:03pm
Stan Burfield That's great. I have Dad's big diary of his whole life to work from. I think he started it when he retired to Calgary. But it begins with his first memories in England when he was two or three.
Like · August 27 at 3:31pm
Larry Burfield Moving from a city in England to the praries still is a big adventure for a family with three small children. I admire our grandparents for taking on such a huge venture!
Like · August 27 at 4:31pm
Stan Burfield Yes, me too. One thing I found interesting in the beginning was how our grandmother, a fairly young, beautiful woman, felt moving from an upper-middle class environment in a lovely house in Hastings to a sod house in the middle of nowhere. It turns out she initially migrated to New Zealand with the rest of her relatives, but then came back to England for some reason. The she met and married our grandfather who was newly bankrupt and had to homestead somewhere. he went to Canada to scout it out and decided it would be too rough for her so came back to say they should go to New Zealand instead. She refused! No explanation of her problem with New Zealand. So they did as SHE wanted, homesteaded on the prairie. Her decision, so at least she wasn't being dragged into it!
Like · August 27 at 5:52pm · Edited
Larry Burfield When I heard when she got off the train in Glechan Alberta in June 1910, our Grandfather was not there and needless to say the cell phones didnt work that day..lol The station master let her and the kids stay in the station overnite. She must have had some reservations that night. It would have been great to talk to her about that day.
Like · August 27 at 5:59pm
Stan Burfield Yeah, I'm looking forward to reading more. I just glanced through that part and Dad had it described in detail. At some point I'll definitely do it up properly as a story. Incredible situation they lived through.
Like · August 27 at 6:04pm
Larry Burfield And then having some prosperous years in the twenties, having to leave it and move north to new challanges, and then later selling all that and moving to central Alberta. They had a lot of dreams that failed to materaize, and had to move on. Define changes that had to be made, but not because of failing to work hard.
Unlike · 1 · August 27 at 6:37pm
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