Write a memoir. Live forever. Who cares? I didn’t, but my son Charlie did because he asked me to write about a few of my life experiences. The project grew until I had a memoir containing 45 stories.

I scanned some of my mementos such as a student body card with my picture on it and a painting of my home in 1945 and used them as illustrations.I think that writing a memoir is an excellent way to get organized before one dies. It is also an effective way of deflecting those mementos from the trash bin.

I received a surprising bonus in this effort. I learned things about my self. As Socrates said several thousand years ago, “An unexamined life is not worth living.” I found out what he meant and it’s hard to explain the value I felt in discovering why and how my life events occurred.

I confess that some of my original stories were so poorly written that my sister-in-law Mary suggested that I take a writing class. I did and I studied and wrote for two years in a San Jose, CA municipal adult education class called “Fact and Fiction for Fun and Profit” taught by author Erna Holyer. The result was my book Karl Arnold Belser, Memoirs of a Late 20th Century Engineer.

I am retired and I didn’t want boxes of books in my garage that would ultimately find a home in the garbage. I bought a double-sided Brother laser printer and made a few letter sized, black and white copies in a clear plastic notebook with a color cover page insert. I wanted color printing because most of the photos and illustrations were in color.

I didn’t want to pay for color printing. The black and white books already cost $20 each not counting my labor. Hence I converted the Microsoft WORD document into a PDF (Portable Document Format) file using the free PrimoPDF program and posted it on the free web space that EARTHLINK allows me as part of my e-mail account.

Creating a website is somewhat tricky and you may need help. I read a web article titled HOW WEB PAGES WORK on How Stuff Works about creating a web page in html. This was too difficult, but I now understood in principle how to create and fill in an html table. I downloaded the free NETSCAPE COMMUNICATOR 7.1 browser which includes the “what you see is what you get” web page generator called COMPOSER. I used it to create a personal website without having to write any html code. Then I posted my book on my personal home page http://home.netcom.com/~kbelser/.

Despite the convenience of the PDF format many people including my son Charlie, who takes the train to work every day, have told me that they would prefer an MP3 audio book. I bought a program called TextAloud with the beautiful AT&T voices and converted the book to MP3 by chapter. There are many Text-to-Speech-to-MP3 conversion programs available.

If the technicalities of this discussion intimidate you, there are many computer science types that will find setting up a website, scanning pictures, PDF distilling, and MP3 creation relatively simple. So get some help.

Take a look at my website and see if PDF or MP3 audio publishing of family history might not work for you or your parents. It’s an effort of love, not money.