This Week's Program
Family Stories and Memories
Ervin Stutzman’s father died when he was just three. Many years later when his mother was approaching her own death, Ervin wondered how he could get to know his father better—before his mother died, too. This effort led to writing several engaging fiction books about his family. The first was about his Amish entrepreneur father, Tobias of the Amish. The second was Emma: A Widow among the Amish, about how his mother survived and raised the family after Tobias was killed in a car accident.
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Continue ReadingMy Turn
Just Sayin'
Emily Ralph
My great-grandfather sold the family farm when my mother was a child. Since then, our family has scattered around the country. As someone who has moved pretty frequently, I often find myself wistful as I listen to my friends reflect on “coming home” to a community or a homestead.
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Related Resources
BOOKS
How to Write Your Personal or Family History: (If You Don't Do It, Who Will?) by Katie Funk Wiebe. Good Books, 2009. $11.95
You Never Gave Me a Name: One Mennonite Woman's Story Katie Funk Wiebe, with foreword by Wally Kroeker. Herald Press, 2009. $15.95
To Our Children's Children: Preserving Family Histories for Generations to Come by Bob Greene, Doubleday, 1993. $19.95
WEBSITES
Blog by Shirley Showalter on the creating and keeping of memoirs.
Shirley Showalter’s Top Ten books on writing memoirs
National Association of Memoir Writers website
www.lulu.com - Website where you can print and publish your own memoir or family story relatively inexpensively.
OTHER
Book by Ervin Stutzman that may be of interest to Shaping Families listeners/website visitors:
From Nonresistance to Justice: The Transformation of Mennonite Church Peace Rhetoric, 1908-2008. $39.99 Hardover. 600 pages. Herald Press, 2011
Burton's Blog
Funny Things, Family Memories
Burton Buller
In this week’s program, Ervin Stutzman talks about growing up without a father and how important it was to reconstruct a memory, even a highly mediated and rather synthetic memory, of his father by researching and writing a book that recalled his extended family’s memories of his father, Tobias.
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Favorite Family Recipes
Nutty Broccoli Slaw
Dorothy Hartman got this recipe from a friend after tasting it when she brought the salad to a church fellowship meal and then found one almost like it in one of her Taste of Home cookbooks. Dorothy says, "The dressing has just the right combination of vinegar, oil and sugar to suit my taste. I like to serve it with pork and potatoes." Updates
Current Offer
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