Of Me I Muse

An inspirational guide to lateral thinking when writing family and personal histories. Whether or not there’s a heaven or a hell, people will live on in the memories of those they’ve left behind. On that premise, along with the belief that we all have life stories, philosophies, and influences simply by “having been,” to pass on down to later generations—that we don’t have to have been celebrities—Gary Kessler offers up a collection of vignettes on his somewhat unusual and adventuresome life and the events that influenced that life. Most of the vignettes, in the form of essays, short stories, and poems, in this collection were entries in writing contests and/or published in anthologies. Others have been added to fill in holes on life-influencing events. The purpose of Of Me I Muse is both to pass on a slice of “who we were/what influenced us” from two generations before the author—to the extent they could be captured and preserved in the eleventh hour of losing them—and an encouragement to others to record in some fashion, the major points of their lives before letting them be lost to help keep themselves alive in the minds of their descendants. You don’t have to have been a celebrity to play.