On-Demand Memoir for 3AM Googlers

Memoirs are popular. Everyone's got a story to tell. I stumbled onto the form soon after I started my web diary in 1999, when I was bored with rants about work and someone invited me to join her Memoir webring.* I was hooked. A crazy quilt of childhood and coming-of-age stories began to fill my online pages.

I wrote for myself. I disguised names and places. I figured that my experiences, my storytelling should be fascinating enough without risking anyone taking issue with my facts. No one paid attention. Without giving it much thought, I began revealing real names and real places.

An example. In 1971, I joined Green Valley School, an organization that combined a Sixties commune with a residential center for troubled kids. It was my Peace-Corps thing. I put in 18 months, married the headmaster and got the hell out. In 2004, I started writing about it online -- life through the eyes of an unworldly 22-year-old.

Surprise. When Google began hitting its stride as a search engine, people found me. Their emails said:"I was there!" Turns out Green Valley had been a crossroads for all the bizarre experiences anyone who lived through the Sixties could have. It felt like making your home at Woodstock. Without the music. And with lots of disturbing adolescents who'd been ejected from their families.

My memoirs became something discovered at 3 AM by sleepless 50-year-olds, looking for their past. Looking for themselves in someone else's story. It wasn't me they were searching for but a place in their minds, a time in their lives. Do you know me? For years, every few months someone surfaced with their story to tell. Do you know me? they'd ask. Their memories were vivid after 40 years -- funny, tragic, mystical, angry -- it was one of those kind of places.

This makes me wonder about the purpose and format of memoirs. If I had published my little tales in a book, they would have been static, no doubt buried now in the out-of-print bin. Because they became part of my online stream of consciousness, they became relational -- part of a complex network of memories, linking together a set of people with very different experiences in a shared place. We were aging. Some of us were dying young.Some were reconciling with the ghosts of those dizzy days. Some were only years later surfacing memories of the unspeakable.

8.3.2009 (rev. 4.6.2026)

* Webrings of Power (2024) "Webrings played a significant role in the early days of the web by connecting like-minded websites. In an era before search engines became the powerhouse they are today, webrings offered a curated exploration of the web, where websites about niche hobbies, fan cultures, academic interests, or any other imaginable topic. This not only made it easier for users to find content that matched their interests but also created a more cohesive web experience; each webring acted as a mini-community where members could support and promote each other’s work."