Martha RascheFeb 12 minRemember the Time...Remember the time my nieces Ella, Grace and Sarah attended the father-daughter Girl Scout dance and walked into the fortune-teller’s tent...
Martha RascheDec 31, 20201 minA Quote“Storytelling is an art in the mountains, a way of transmitting history, culture, and shared experience from generation to generation.“ —...
Martha RascheNov 30, 20201 minPossessions Help Tell Our StoriesA copy of Reef Points is among the more intriguing doations I’ve come across at the thrift store where I work. The US. Navy’s official mi...
Martha RascheOct 26, 20202 minMy Cancer, Past TenseEarlier this month, my medical records at Community South Cancer Center were changed from non-Hodgkin lymphoma, diffuse large B-cell, to ...
Martha RascheSep 4, 20202 minMissing A FriendAfter a fitful few hours of sleep, yesterday I awoke to a day with no Dawn. The day before, she died. Most unexpectedly. Age 59. Dawn and...
Martha RascheAug 4, 20202 min100 Years AgoOne hundred years ago this summer, Frank and Anna (Schroeder) Rasche welcomed son Ernest into the world. Forty-three years and some month...
Martha RascheJun 29, 20202 minUncle RomanFor as long as I can remember, I knew that I once had an uncle Roman. For just as long, I knew that he died as a teenager when he was cli...
Martha RascheApr 20, 20201 minA Quote"History isn't usually told by the bigwigs of the era, even if they are some of its main characters. Instead, it is often reconstructed f...
Martha RascheMar 31, 20202 minI'm adding "Pandemic" to my Life Stories topicsThree weeks ago, I led a Life Stories session at the history center of an adjacent county. It was our sixth of eight sessions, the time I...
Martha RascheJan 24, 20201 minA QuoteAt the end of our lives, we become only memories. If we're lucky, someone is passing those down. — Plum Johnson, "They Left Us Everything"
Martha RascheJan 2, 20201 minSisters Write, Share Life StoriesI spent Monday afternoons this past fall leading Life Stories classes for religious sisters in a nearby town. Three of the sisters in the...
Martha RascheNov 22, 20192 minMemories of Elementary Book FoldingI do book folding. Despite the name, it’s actually the pages of books that get folded. I fold old books — one page at a time, two folds p...
Martha RascheSep 16, 20192 minRemembering MaryOne of my first Life Stories clients, Mary, died last month. She was 94. Her father had been a sharecropper in Kentucky, and soon after I...
Martha RascheJul 23, 20191 minDetails Make the StoryAlice and Edwin participated in my most recent Life Stories class. Alice had a career as a beautician. In her beauty shop, she had a Coke...
Martha RascheMay 24, 20191 min2 Very Short StoriesSix weeks before Judy was born, her father died in a car accident. So Judy and her mother moved in with her mother’s parents, Judy’s gran...
Martha RascheApr 12, 20191 minGo Fly a Kite. Literally.His days of making and flying kites with the neighborhood boys took place more than 70 years ago, but to hear Paul describe it during a g...
Martha RascheMar 31, 20191 minA Quote"Children rarely want to know who their parents were before they were parents, and when age finally stirs their curiosity there is no par...
Martha RascheFeb 19, 20191 minShared Experiences Lead to Shared StoriesThis past Saturday I ran into a client whose life stories I completed writing early last year. Bernice, who became a widow during the tim...
Martha RascheJan 28, 20191 minRemembering Their MothersMary was 7 when her mother died. Don was 8 when his died. Wilma was 12. Katharine was 17 when her mom died of lung cancer and leukemia an...
Martha RascheDec 2, 20181 minIf Not Now, When?Lou died last week. I am still in disbelief. After I wrote about her in a blog on Oct. 16 and linked it to my Facebook page, she commente...