WHY I WRITE

 

It's important to have a way of sharing who you are with others. My mother seemed to be afraid of the world. Everything was a "secret". I never knew what was real and what was a product of her imagination. She closed her door to the world. Once her brother, my uncle Harry came to the door and she wouldn't even let him in. She stood at the door talking with him.

 

Her younger brother, my uncle Sam, was that way too. He went about his various businesses very well, with great energy and, I think, success. But he was always afraid and he would never share. If he had friends, I never saw any evidence of it. And when I wanted to write an article about our store, Metropolitan News, he told me not to.

 

When the National Film Board wanted to film at Metro, Sam refused, but my father persuaded him and they did come into the store with lights and cameras. But only a few seconds of film were actually produced for the public. The National Film Board movie is called "Montreal By Night" and my father, George Rubin, appears in it very briefly. Most of us end up on the proverbial cutting room floor. But if we're lucky, a bit of us may remain. And so I write about my father and the world can get to know a little about him from what I publish at http://phylliscartersjournal.blogspot.com.

 

If we do not share who we are, we disappear. And all our memories disappear with us. The only immortality we have is in our friends and our descendents, and in the memories of our experiences - what we have seen and done and felt, and what we have learned and what we think.

 

Hermits are forgotten, or they become legends and mysteries, and only scholars may care. I don't think any scholar would care about my mother or uncle Sam, or for that matter, about Patrick Farney or Lester Allen, or Buck Fortin, or Alma Mia or David Cowlishaw, or my father's wonderful dog, Kelly. But when I write about them, they become known to people as far away as Mongolia and Indonesia and Zimbabwe.

 

Almost 97,000 people have read my blogs to date.