During a Breakfast Bunch net hosted by VE7FB in November 2019, Rod (VE7FB) offered the insight that our club is, at heart, its stories. Let that sink in for a moment…
… Well, I let that insight sink in for a lot more than a moment with the result that I find myself writing this post with Rod’s comment front and centre — “our club is … its stories.” Therefore, given our club is its stories, it makes sense that we should use our website to collect, present and remember the stores that make our club. Stories about our member’s amateur radio adventures, stories about our interactions, funny stores, sad stories, etc.
As someone who loves a story and has come to realize that everyone has a story(s), I initially thought that I could bring up the subject and entice a few stories out on a Breakfast Bunch net that I was hosting on Remembrance Day 2019. Well, it did not go as enthusiastically as planned and, in retrospect it should have been obvious to me that not everyone is open to sharing a personal story, let alone a story on a public frequency on Remembrance Day. Duh!
So, what to do?
As I’ve rebuilt the website it dawned on me that it is already a collection of stories. We’ve got some pictures which, by themselves, tell a story. We’ve got pages of information that, in isolation or in aggregate tell stories but we don’t yet have any real stories “from the heart”.
We don’t have stories that tell of the difficulty, from a personal perspective, of how difficult it is, for example, to age out of the hobby or how it works and feels to dispose of a spouse’s radio gear. We don’t have stories about the joy of buying a new piece of equipment and getting it on the air or the stories of how it felt when the wind toppled your antenna.
I know these stories are out there and I know because MIRA members have become friends that gather on a regular basis to shoot the sh*t … i.e. tell stories. So, going forward, I’d like to put it out to the club, let’s make our stories available to future members to learn from, to laugh with, to make them feel comfortable about joining with us clowns.
A lot of work has already been done. For example, Keith (VA7TAF) has collected much of our club’s history and a section of the website <Our History> is standing bye to publish his work. When up and running, <Our History> is where you can go to read stories about what has happened before, the official story of MIRA.
The <Blog>, where you are now, is what I consider the living, breathing heart of the website and is where I’d like to present our stories as they happen. This is where you’ll find personal stories we choose to share before they move into <OUR HISTORY>. This is where I hope you’ll help me populate the blog with your stories because stories are the heart and sole of the club. Sharing your stories about your interests (i.e. the ZUMspot posts), stories about digging that damn hole for your mast, stories … After all, we’re just people, people with stories.
What’s your story?
December 16, VE7RQX