Geo-story - Pannage

Places and life-stories

People like to tell their story. Here’s mine.

I have been absorbed by the relationship between place and individual life-stories, my own and other peoples’. I have chosen to call this geo-story and included links to some of them here. It makes sense that places influence what people become, but tuning-in to one’s places is altogether more pro-active and engaging. It’s also about curating a representation of your own life to share with others.

“We are all the heroes of our own stories, and one of the arts of perspective is to see yourself small on the stage of another’s story, to see the vast expanse of the world that is not about you, and to see your power, to make your life, to make others, or break them, to tell stories rather than be told by them.”
Rebecca Solnit (2013) The Faraway Nearby

“Place isn’t a stage, a backdrop against which we act out our lives: it is part of what we are.“
Alastair Bonnett (2014) Off the Map: Lost Spaces, Invisible Cities, Forgotten Islands, Feral Places and What They Tell Us About the World

The Onlooker

The Onlooker is the family memoir by Alice Ascoli, my great aunt, who wrote in 1962, “It is my fervent hope that this generation determine that many things in the world their ancestors knew shall never return and the legacies we have left them of struggles unconquered, and problems unsolved, they may realise are “the birth pangs of a new age” (Mark 13 New Testament) and in enthusiastic resolve and imagination seek their solution.”

Read more >>

FSSW 1966-1973

FSSW73 is a collection of memories and photographs from school-friends about our time together at Friends’ School, Saffron Walden. It was initiated in 2002 in anticipation of a year-group reunion. It was further built up after another school reunion held in 2005 when most of us reached the age of 50. It still receives occasional comments and additions. I hope that one day another photo-collection will come to light.

Well, 2015, when most of us reached 60, passed without a reunion. Not much appetite for it, eh?

See www.pannage.com/fssw73 [opens in a new window]

Atlantic Airmail: Mum and Son 1973-74

Atlantic Airmail records the letters from home, and my replies, while I was working in New York City. There is also travelogue of the time I spent travelling by Greyhound Bus across the United States. Both countries experience their own changes just as my own life is further influenced by the places I saw.

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“I told you I would take you places“

“I told you I would take you places” is a heavily ironic phrase I use with Margaret when we get into a spot of difficulty or discomfort somewhere. The collection of photographs was initiated for our silver wedding anniversary in 2009.

See www.pannage.com/places/ [opens in a new window]

‘We need stories myths and folktales as well as true accounts, to
help us hold the beginnings, middles and ends of our lives together.
Without them we shall not have hope: yes, to lose stories is to lose hope, but conversely to construct and cherish stories is to maintain hope.’
Richardson, Robin (1996: 101) Fortunes and Fables: Education for hope in troubled times, Stoke-on-Trent: Trentham Books

The Pannage blog

The Pannage blog ‘place’ as a main theme set in current interests and experiences.
Community geography, expressive life and learning in a digital, connected world.

See www.pannage.blogspot.com [opens in a new window]
Additions to this blog are now suspended. Posts are more likely to appear here.

My Place – East Kent . (2012)

A personal account of where we have lived.

See www.pannage.com/my-place-east-kent

Family. (2013)

Curating some photographs from the 1960s and 1970s.

See www.pannage.com/geo-story/family/

New for 2014: Shifting Sands

Shifting Sands came about from a de-cluttering task and turned into a series of blogposts of my music (or our music).

See http://www.pannage.com/geo-story/my-music-shifting-sands/

In essence, these various bits of illustration and story-telling provide what has been called ‘a frame of reference around your experience’. Let me know what you think of these geo-stories.