the ghosts of story

I almost called this post "when worlds collide" because it's a bit like whiplash, careening from one world to another this week while I'm in D.C. But it's not a collision of worlds that's happening. It's a realization of ghosts. Everything has its season, then passes on. See if you don't think so, below.

Twenty four hours in three different worlds:

Teaching at St. Patrick's in Washington, D.C. These students are gathering their stories, their personal narratives. We tell our stories in song, dance, art, words and more. How will these students choose to save their stories... or will they?
Walking through Harper's Ferry, West Virginia, at the confluence of the Shenandoah and Potomac Rivers. Here lies John Brown, along with the ghosts of history, stories saved, and stories we will never know.
Touring Andrews Air Force Base and remembering my childhood days in Camp Springs, Maryland in the sixties. This is Franny's world in book one of the Sixties Trilogy. It was my world, growing up. Now I am visiting ghosts and retelling my story, casting it as fiction, in a novel for young readers.
My character Franny lives at the corner of Coolridge and Allentown, as I did in 1962. This is the road she walked to school. I walked it yesterday, with the ghosts of my past.

Soon we will all be ghosts, even the students above. How will the stories they leave us help those who come after us live on?

This, I believe, is the sacred trust of literature.