Momstribute.com gives you the opportunity to write a journal. Anything you type is saved and can be added to at your leisure. Don't know what to write about? How about taking inspiration from the writer of our featured book on this site, "Lois and her Irish-ness" by Tom Henn? It started as a journal about his mom and it ultimately gave him a life-changing insight into the lives of all those who knitted into his family circle. Here is an excerpt:

Moving house in 1935 meant moving school and, for the Walker girls, this included St Julianna School, St Bartholomew Grade School and Alvernia High School. At all these schools there was the opportunity to see just how much Chicago had become a melting pot of immigrants from all over the world. Some of Lois’s close and long-lasting friends had surnames that told of a previous generation’s emigration. They included Patty Lenard (Ireland); Peggy Olson (Sweden), Barbara Kordic (Austria); June Bannacorsi (Italy); Arlene Weiner and Anne Hartlup (Germany).

In his 1939 hit song "Ballad for Americans" Paul Robeson sang of the promise of many becoming one, while maintaining diverse cultural practices.

He sang about believing in a brand new country with a mighty fine idea that was adopted unanimously in Congress July 4, 1776. So who were the believers of this fine idea of Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness"? He sang that he believed in this idea and he represented the whole of the American people. He was the “Irish, Jewish, Italian, French and English, Spanish, Russian, Chinese, Polish, Scotch, Hungarian, Swedish, Finnish, Canadian, Greek and Turk, and Czech.” "Am I an American?" he asked. "I represent the whole" he answered.

Historians of Chicago portray this mix with emphasis because it created a culture of unity amongst the immigrants that was imparted to later arrivals as a sense of what it meant to be American. It was to be a culture of unity in which old values, new migrations, re-crossings of oceans, economic change and popular culture mattered greatly and allowed homelands to survive and be recreated in Chicago.