Common Place Journal:

Some recent writing.

Introduction

I started Common Place in April 2008, while visiting my daughter in Alpujarra, south of Granada, Spain. It was there, in her small house, that I began writing “Quotes & Thoughts.” I turned it into a small journal because it provided a convenient framework. Later, knowing that nothing lives now without a web presence, I enlisted Ben Brinkley, my niece’s husband,to help recast it as an online publication. This is the result. Common Place was the name my sister, Alice Parman (mother of Ben’s wife Rachael Carnes), gave to “Quotes & Thoughts,” noting that commonplace books were a favored genre in 18th-century England. —John Parman