Why This Blog
I have come to believe that we all need to write down our stories….
We may think our lives unexceptional, uninteresting and not worthy of historical record. But in one hundred or two hundred years, someone who reads about them will find them fascinating. Not just because life will be so much more different then, but because time would have turned the ordinary into the extraordinary.
My mother, Gertrude “Trudi” Rouse Bomba, was English and came to the United States as part of a job in 1940 after the outbreak of World War II. The only way she could maintain communication with relatives in England was by mail. Many still extant, the long, newsy letters exchanged between her and members of the Rouse family over those years not only provide insight into personal character and family dynamic, but a vivid portrait of the era painted by those living it. When my mother and her sisters wrote to each other, it never occurred to them that they were writing for future generations. But they were.
We all need to write down our stories.
This blog is my attempt to start doing so. It’s a place for me to not so much pen a memoir, but to record and reflect upon moments in my life. It is also a place to publish bits of writing I’ve done over the years – short stories, poems, essays – that I created but never did anything with.
I don’t believe this blog is the end product of my “history.” While the Internet, social media and the “cloud” are marvelous for instant publication and widespread distribution, one must ask: How lasting will it all be? My mother and her family’s letters still exist because they were written or typed on paper and, after crossing the Atlantic, found their way into boxes. In a hundred years, will this blog still be on a server somewhere? If it is, will a great-great-grandchild of mine be able to find it? Unlikely. In a hundred years will the hard drives of today be readable? Even if they were, if you found some old thumb drive in a box, would you bother to see what was on it before throwing it out?
Maybe I have to print all this out and make a book. We’ll see.
Whatever the future of these writings might be, I hope you enjoy them now in the present. I also hope they inspire you to sit down and begin to record your own stories. You don’t have to create a blog, just get something on a piece of paper and stick it in a box that, one day, just might be found and opened.
Christopher Bomba
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Who Am I?
I was born and raised in Los Angeles. My father, originally from Texas, was a motion picture sound editor. My English mother came to Los Angeles in her job as secretary to British film producer Alexander Korda. After getting a bachelor’s degree in theater from Santa Clara University, I returned to L.A. to enter the film business and work in feature film story development – as either an analyst or executive – for the next forty-seven years, primarily at MGM and 20th Century Fox. A lifelong writer, I’ve penned screenplays, stage plays, short stories and poems. Retired, I’m doing things like this blog.