Listen up.
SBDC on WJBC with Charlene Homan
Upcoming events
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Memoir Writing
Charlene has presented in numerous Memoir Writing classes at Heartland Community College in Normal and Parkland Community College in Urbana. Check your local Continuing Education guide for information about upcoming classes near you. I will link upcoming classes here if I am presenting.
PAST CLASSES
You have a story worth telling! Touchstone Storytelling is looking forward to presenting at Heartland Community College’s Continuing Education course, “The Making of a Memoir: Writing Your Life Story.” Join us 11/9 and 11/16 from 6-8 p.m. on the campus in Normal. The course is led by Shirley Splittstoesser and is $79. Register here for Class #2156, Section A.
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Show & Tell Seminars
Come hear how you can start writing your life story by crafting small sketches on specific topics starting with “My Favorite Things.” Bring your favorie thing, or a photo of it, and be ready to describe it to the group as well as why it’s important to you. Examples include a favorite book, photo, handmade item, family heirloom, etc.
WHEN: Wed., April 10 @ 10:30 a.m..
WHERE: Graceland Center for Purposeful Aging, 3625 North Sheridan Rd. Peoria. IL.
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More to come.
Future Speaking Engagements will be listed here. Please reach out to me if you’d like me to present a Memoir Writing Class or Seminar to your group.
This excerpt is taken from my Show & Tell seminar. What do you have to share?
Pink Satin Boxes
One of my favorite things contains oodles of small trinkets, worth no more than a dollar. The pink satin diamond stitched box, most likely once home to women’s gloves or a small sewing kit, opens with a small loop of satin ribbon.
Inside the faded box lies a treasure trove of small plastic plates in a hue of colors, replete with plated lobster and peas, turkey dinners, and trout with blotches of green peas. There are china cups and silver teapots, baby bottles and heads of cauliflower, a pineapple, a fried egg. A pair of badminton rackets and small pots and pans dot the jumble. There’s a meat grinder, a spoon and a miniature roll of paper towels. A muffin pan and laundry basket complete the mix.
Running my hands through the heap, there’s a gentle tinkling of plates against spoons against cups. This brings me back to a home on Ann Street.
As small children we’d often visit my grandma and grandpa’s home and race to the dining room. There, in grandma’s cherry serving buffet nestled among boxes of “pretties” sat the coveted pink box. Me, my sister and cousins would reach our chubby hands in, delving into the world of miniatures.
We would play with this box for hours and hours, letting our imaginations guide us on our adventure, and shrinking us to play among the land of littles. I was always fascinated with miniature things, and coveted my cousins’ dollhouse. How I longed to live in a such a place!
Today, the pink satin box lies nestled in my office. It is one of the few things I requested to inherit from my dear grandma when she died. I was 26 years old. Among her most cherished items in our eyes were the pink box, the milky green depression glass bird-shaped candy dish which was always bursting with hard candies, and her prized collections of beautiful antique plates. I walked away with the pink box, but any one of us would have been equally blessed to have received it.
Although this treasure is worthless to others, it is priceless to me. My coveted pink box.