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By Nancy A. Murdock 1. What inspired you to begin the Murdock Muse? It was December 1990 and we were thinking about what we wanted to give our children for Christmas. We often do a major writing project for them, such as a portion of our memoirs. One year I wrote a nature diary, with an entry for each day of the year. One year for their birthdays I did collages of photos of them during the years, along with family pictures. We had a simple computer that could handle three pages per document. We had noticed that our children, spread all over the country, often didn't know what was going on with each of the others. They seemed to rely on us to keep them up to date. But writing individual letters took a lot of time, and sometimes we didn't get certain news out to some of the kids. Also, our grandchildren never saw each other, so their cousins weren't real to them. I decided to do a monthly family newsletter for one year for our children, our grandchildren, and Bob's mother, the only living parent we had. The first issue, three pages long, was January 1991. I had just returned from Japan, so the main topics were my trip to Japan and the birth of the Murdock Muse. I invited all of our readers to become journalists by writing or drawing something for the Muse. (Drawings were easier to handle back when photocopied the Muse and mailed it.) The first ones to respond were our two grandsons in MN (Jason and Nic), who lived with their mother and stepfather. This was just what I had hoped for: enthusiasm and participation by those who didn't often hear from the others in the family. Bob saw the value of this communication and began to help me the next month. At first he concentrated on the mailing portion: addressing the envelopes, etc. But at heart he is an editor, so he proofread my articles and gradually worked up to using his own considerable writing talent. 2. How did you encourage participation from so many of your family members? I offered to make someone a "Muse Journalist" after three contributions. This level of honor was marked by an announcement in the Muse and that person's name listed on the back page. I also listed any others who had made any contributions at all, but under "Other Contributors." When a couple of grandchildren and the daughter of a friend began to send drawings or cartoons, I waited until three had arrived and then designated them as "Muse Cartoonist" or "Muse Artist." Grandson Sean, who liked to submit jokes for the Kids' Page, got a little space titled "Sean's Jokes." The Kids' Page itself was the idea of granddaughter Christie. At the end of the first year, when I wrote that it was due to self-destruct unless the readers wanted it continue, we received a couple of notes that made it clear that we should continue. The most urgent was from Jason and Nic's mother, Dawn, who said she thought it was really important for the boys to know their extended family. Years later at Jason's graduation party, we learned that several of Dawn's family members looked forward to reading the Muse each month when they visited her. They'd gotten hooked on it! As we added more categories of readers, our pool of possible adult contributors enlarged. Although Bob's brother Gene has been our most faithful author, many others have had spells when they wrote regularly, and even more write every so often. With the advent of email in many of our homes, we began to hear from some family members more than we ever had before. We also write articles from our telephone log, which we keep to remind ourselves of phone conversations. Until our method of communication switched to email, we always included a tiny thank-you note with the Muse mailing to contributors who had sent us stuff for that issue. I think this really helped a lot to get nieces and nephews, etc., to write. These are people we never heard from before the Muse! We also mentioned the contributions each month in a brief article. We started taking notes at any gatherings that included family members or friends known to the readership. Most people enjoy being interviewed by the Muse editors. It doesn't all get into the Muse, but we have a good time talking with them anyway. It's a terrific excuse for asking questions of people you don't often see, and it keeps us up to date with what is happening in their lives. MORE HISTORY-- After seven years we switched to bimonthly publication. This took away some of the stress that came from the pressure to spend one weekend in four on the Muse, and to manage the copying and mailing for an increasingly large readership. We had a rather full calendar, and I was starting to resent Muse weekends. This is not a good way to give a gift! We bragged about the 90 families who were receiving our publication, but it did take a lot of work to accomplish the monthly Muse. It took us several years to get online after we bought a computer with online access. I now spend 9 hours a day at my computer in my cubicle at work, and my interest in the Web after I get home is, at best, minimal. Finally we just had to set a date for completion of this modernization plan to become reality. Of course, the main reason it got accomplished was that our son Darrel had become proficient in Web pages and was willing to hold our hands while we took our first shaky steps. And granddaughter Khendra gave us a big boost at the beginning that helped us realize what we needed to decide before we even got going. Now Bob is excited about working with HTML, so his computer interest is at such a high pitch that I have taken a back seat in the business of getting the articles from the email inbox to our Web page. We're really happy with the space we rent online, because it has NO advertisements. Google has picked us up, so we feel as if we are firmly established in the 21st century. We envision continuing the Murdock Muse for many more years. So keep those emails coming, readers! Contact us at murmuse2@yahoo.com.
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