One thing that defines a generation is their way of speaking, especially the slang developed in their teens and twenties. These words often reflect the political changes and social preoccupations of the time. For instance, take a look at the slang and new words and phrases from our grandparents' time …

In the 1930s, many slang words were taken from the world of jazz musicians, such as groovy, jam, tin ear, and juke box, which swept into our language due to the powerful new medium of radio.

In the 1940s, along with sarcastic slang for bureaucratic doubletalk such as gibberish and doubletalk itself, much of the slang had to do with body parts, such as meathooks for hands, breadbasket for stomach, biscuit for head, prayer dukes for knees, and moss for whiskers. Perhaps using humorous words for body parts was a way of neutralizing the horror of what was really happening to those body parts during the war.

In the 1950s the popular vernacular veered back to the world of music as in hip, jive and swinging, intermixed with political jargon such as Big Brother, brainwashing, Cold War, and overkill, reflecting some of the paranoia of that decade.

What will your grandchildren think of the slang from your era?

One of my memoir-writing class participants had vivid memories of margarine from the 1940s. "Margarine was white and looked like a lump of lard," she said. "It came with a yellow color capsule that you broke into it, to make it look like butter. It was one of my jobs to stir the yellow into the margarine. I hated this job because my older brother told me an elaborate and dirty story about that yellow capsule. He said that the margarine factories paid their workers to go to the bathroom in special jars, which they filled the capsules from. It saved money, he said, and it was their patriotic duty to go to the bathroom to make margarine capsules. I was only seven, and my brother was ten, so I actually believed this ridiculous story. I believed it even when my mother told me he was lying. (He got in trouble for telling it, too.) Every time I had to stir in the color I felt sick to my stomach, and I certainly never ate any margarine. Even today I prefer butter. There are some things worse than fat."

What foods sickened you when you were a kid? Why? How do you feel about them today?

A participant in my memoir-writing class remembered that as a teenager in the late 1950s, he tacked up a full-page advertisement of the Marlboro Man on his bedroom wall. "He was so cool," he said. "I wanted to be just like him. Some of my buddies wanted to be like James Dean or Marlon Brando, and wear leather jackets and ride motorcycles. But that wasn't my style, and besides I didn't think my mother would let me wear a leather jacket, much less ride a motorcycle. But the Marlboro Man – he was somebody everyone thought was cool, even your mother. Nobody would cross him. When my friends and I started to smoke, about the age of 17, we all smoked Marlboros. Nobody even considered smoking anything else.

"Thirty years later, when I finally quit smoking, I remember thinking that the Marlboro Man was probably dead of lung cancer by then, and didn't look so cool any more."

What advertisements for products hooked you as a teenager? What products were or are your children persuaded to buy? Are they healthier than yours were?

One of the participants in my memoir-writing class remembered reading Little Toot by Hardie Gramatky, a 1939 classic children's book about a courageous little tugboat, to her four-year-old son. It became his favorite book, and he demanded that she read it nearly every night for about a year. "I guess it's true that literature has great power," she said, "because he was fascinated by boats from then on. In fact he made them his life's work – he's now the captain of a ferry boat!"

What did your mom read to you when you were young? How did that book affect you?
Or … what are you reading to your children or grandchildren right now?

Recalling twenty, thirty, fifty or more years of living is a daunting prospect. Putting your memories in a communicable form requires time and energy, and many of us feel overwhelmed just thinking about it. What do you put in? What do you leave out? How do you remember it all?

Good news: you don't have to! There is no need to write a long tome about your life if you don't want to. You don't need to recall exactly what you were doing, thinking and feeling on, say the 17th of July, 1971.

The vignette, or short-short story, is an excellent form for memoir. Even a few paragraphs may convey a sense of who you are, and what was important to you. A vignette is only a snapshot, but a lot can be learned from a snapshot.

So just begin -- begin with one sentence. Add a few more and make a paragraph. If you want, you can stop there. Or you can add another paragraph and stop there. Or a third -- but only if you feel like it.

Any writing, no matter the length, is inevitably revealing about the writer. That's what makes writing scary sometimes, but that's what makes it powerful too.

The concept of history seems to be exclusively human. Animals don't care about history. They live in the moment only. (At least as far as we know; we must always keep in mind that we've been wrong about animals before.)

But our relationship with the other creatures who share our planet is part of our history. It's a part worth exploring. The way we see animals has changed radically in the last twenty years. For instance, animals are now used in a wide variety of healing work with humans. Perhaps you were part of this societal change?

I remember a story a woman told me about her mother and a Pekinese. About twenty years ago Maryanne helped her mother move into a nursing home. "When Mom first moved there," said Maryanne, "she was very depressed. She wouldn't even get dressed, but just sat on her bed staring out the window, all day long. But then the nursing home started an animal visitor program. All her life Mom had loved Pekinese dogs – she must have owned and trained at least twenty throughout her life. One morning she was sitting on her bed staring out the window when her door opened and in trots this little honey-colored Pekinese with a blue bow in her hair. Mom just opened her arms and that little dog jumped right in them, as if she had known Mom all her life. When she left, Mom was smiling, and the next day she got dressed."

How have animals changed your life? How have you changed theirs? Share their history.

Ever heard of the FW2 generation? I hadn't heard this phrase, until I read Rosie's Daughters: The 'First Woman To' Generation Tells Its Stories. (www.RosiesDaughters.com). What a good book this is!

FW2 means "First Woman To" … and the generation covered in this book refers to those American women born between 1940 and 1945. They are the daughters of the iconic "Rosie the Riveters", who came to adulthood in the turbulent sixties. Talk about breaking glass ceilings – only for this generation of women, those ceilings were often made of concrete. Yet they still managed to break through them and become the "first women to" – you name it – this generation of women achieved more "firsts" than any group of women before or since. They shaped the modern world for their younger sisters, daughters and granddaughters, providing us with freedoms and encouragement that they or their mothers never had.

Authors Matilda Butler (an FW2 herself) and Kendra Bonnett (a successor Baby Boomer) interviewed and tell the stories of more than 100 FW2 women – intimate, richly detailed stories that will make you laugh, cry, nod in recognition, and most of all, feel grateful.

This is an inspirational read that reminds us again that it's not only the famous who make history; it's not only the rich and powerful who can change the world.

I remember watching Chet Huntley and David Brinkley on the network nightly news, even though I was in grade school at the time. My father watched them every night, and insisted that everyone else watch too -- my mother, me, and even my little brother after he turned 4. At first my brother thought this was a great privilege, to be able to watch a grown-up program with Dad. But he soon became bored and wiggled and squirmed all through the show. Still, Dad insisted he be in the room, because Dad thought watching the news was a way to understand your country's history. He believed children should have their minds stretched as far as possible, at every available opportunity.

I actually liked watching Huntley/Brinkley, not because I was interested in the news or in either of those (to me) old and boring men, but because during the commercials my father would discuss what we had just heard, and he directed most of his remarks to me – and then listened to my replies. And although most of my remarks must have been very funny, I don't remember him ever laughing at me. Instead I felt flattered that he wanted my opinion. So I started really watching the news just so I could have an opinion to share.

Dad was a wily old fox. Also a very good father. Who knows, if I hadn't watched Huntley Brinkley when I was a child, maybe I wouldn't have developed the love of history that has informed and blessed my life.

Oh those first times! When searching for memories to write about, think of the first time you did something, saw something, heard something, felt something. First times have long shelf lives; they often stay fresh forever. Sit down to write about one of your first times. Start with "I remember …"

I remember an old twelve string guitar, its polish scratched by the long fingernails of my first love, a marijuana-clouded musician dressed in tattered jeans and a tie-dyed shirt. His hair fell over his eyes and down his back in cascades of disgust for the establishment, while he played the guitar with single-minded concentration. His eyes were dark and intense despite the numbing effects of the joint hanging out of his mouth.

I remember what it was to be young and tempestuous, passionate about the truth and furious about the lies we were told by those we had trusted not to betray us. My favorite songs were heavy with E-flat and A-flat, minor chords which echoed the sadness and betrayal of those times, the great late-sixties.

First loves may betray you too. I wish he hadn't. I wish his hair had stayed black and lustrous forever, but I know, even though he is long gone from my life, that now it is gray. I know his face is now lined with his own failures and his own lies.

I wish we could wipe the surface of the guitar clean of scratches and rings where beer cans once stood, and someone would again play songs that no one had ever heard before. I wish we could once more strum the anthems of hope and despair. I wish we did not live to see both the dawn and dusk of the Age of Aquarius.

My last post told a story about how the movie On the Waterfront affected a woman's choice of career. Powerful movies such as this often have unexpected consequences on viewers, although not all of them are so deep and meaningful. Here's another story from a class participant about the same movie:

"Diane" remembered going to see On The Waterfront when she was a teenager in the 1950s. "I was pretty excited," she shared. "Not because I wanted to see the movie but because it was my very first date with this cute boy I'd had a crush on for a long time. I was so happy when he finally asked me out.

"He was a Brando fan, and was amazed when I said I had never seen any of Brando's movies. He looked at me with pity and told me he would educate me on what good film was all about. I was young, and he was cute, so this patronizing remark didn't offend me at the time.

"But his choice of movie turned out to be a mistake, because I was overwhelmed by how beautiful and powerful Marlon Brando was. I couldn't take my eyes off him, and suddenly my date didn't seem quite so cute. In fact, he seemed downright boring compared with Brando, and my crush died a swift and complete death.

"It's a good thing, too. Some years later I ran into my old date, and he wasn't cute in any way – paunchy and balding – but he was still downright boring. I'll always be grateful to Marlon Brando for breaking us up."

What movies changed your life?