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The Questions You Wished You’d Asked: Writing Challenge

PART ONE This is both a Writing Challenge and an exploration. Please complete Part One before reading Part Two. For this Assignment you need to make a list of questions you wished you had asked or were able to ask, a relative who is now dead or unable to be interviewed. What I want you […]

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The Circle Game: Loss and Healing

Dear Readers you may be wondering where I have been. I have been wondering that too. If one has lived a half century or more one has endured loss. Sometimes the losses are monumental like death or war, and sometimes so subtle we may hardly notice them. Then one day you wake-up to the passage […]

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Endings: A Soprano’s Aria Chapter 36

The above is the last regular entry in the diary. However the page below was from 1913, and it predates the first entry in the dairy which was September 1st 1913. So in a remarkable way we arrive back at the beginning.

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Registered at UC Berkeley: A Soprano’s Aria Chapter 35

Feb. 14 – Life was some what of a drag all around.  I have all my notes to show that I attended class regularly and made good marks. Finished textiles and took up a short course in  Psycology  Also a few private lessons in dress drafting from Mrs. Percival. Feb. 23 – Jessie went to […]

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The Culmination of a Long Dream: A Soprano’s Aria Chapter 34

Editor’s note this chapter is of particular interest to me as it recounts Lulu’s perspective in her meeting of her son Milo’s girlfriend, my grandmother Carrie Henager Nov 12 — Yesterday Jessie and I went down to the auditorium to hear a very fine program in Memoriam to the American Army. When we got home […]

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The Days Are Passing Swiftly by and I Am One Day Nearer Home: A Soprano’s Aria Chapter 32

“I am now about to retire it is nearly midnight beautiful and cool and moonlit.”

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My Woman Warrior: Pioneer Mother Catherine Adeline Stewart Murphy Mosier

The impetus for this blog post was my writing challenge to resurrect one of your women warriors. A woman in your tree whose story lies hidden in the names, dates and places. I have spent the last few weeks on Catherine. I offer this as an example of what is possible to resurrect a woman […]

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Women’s Origin Stories

I woke up thinking more about the question I asked earlier—Who Gets to Write History? More specifically who gets to write a woman’s history? Why do we yearn for women to be the heroines of their own stories, the guardians of their own destinies and not just an add-on in the lives of men? Who […]

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Sign of a Kind Heart: A Soprano’s Aria Chapter 26

Monday Aug 5 – Up early. Jessie and Sylvester get started about 8 oclock to Hayward for him to Entrain for Fort McDowell where Uncle Sam will make a soldier boy out of him. Eilene and Leo Hoffman came about 2:30. I will cut and fit her gray dress. I dislike the job exceedingly. I […]

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Family & Fun at the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition 1915: A Soprano’s Aria Chapter 14

Oct 11, 1915 Which I did [Lulu voted!] and for Rolph who proved to be the winner. [ James Rolph was the Mayor of San Francisco from 1912-1935 and then Governor of California for one term. He was a Republican] I watched Mrs Ettiene’s funeral from the Park [Mabel Mary Etienne who died 25 Sep […]

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