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My graduate students, colleagues, friends, and family members have urged me in my late seventies to gather, present, and preserve my stories and reflections from over the decades. I have gleaned stories and reflections from my office files and from the files located in the back stacks of my mind. The gleanings date over the course of fifty years.

We ask one another with words or, if no words are exchanged, by reading another’s manner — what is the story? We need to know another’s story for various reasons. The question “How are you doing?” is a way of asking, “What’s the story?” We need indication as to whether we are going to be on guard or relaxed in another person’s presence. We live our stories. We are our stories. We are our transient story of the moment or the embracing stories that provide each of us our raison d’etre. Our stories may be acceptance of culturally given stories. Our stories may be of our own invention. Our stories may be a weaving together of stories given us and stories we have generated by our own wits.