“To be a person is to have a story to tell.”

Isak Dinesen said that.

And William Carlos Williams said, “Their story, yours and mine -- it’s what we all carry with us on this trip we take, and we owe it to each other to respect our stories and learn from them.”

Precious commodities, these stories.

You don’t have to be old to have a story. But being older means you’ve had a chance to accumulate a lot of chapters. You may have developed some insight into what the story means. And using experience or imagination or both, most people continue to work on that story until "the end."

If you know someone whose story you’d like to hear and preserve, there’s still a chance to become part of the StoryCorps project in Milwaukee.

Last January, the UWM Center on Age and Community partnered with the Milwaukee Public Library to make Milwaukee the first local “outpost” for this National Public Radio project in recording real people’s stories.

• StoryCorps will be recording in the Milwaukee Central Library Oriental Room until January 24, 2008. Log onto the site to register or call toll free 800-850-4406. You’ll get help—and a CD of the interview. With permission, a copy will also be sent to the American Folklore Center at the Library of Congress as well as the Milwaukee Public Library.

• On Tuesday, November 20, 7 pm, at the library’s Centennial Hall, you’ll be able to hear David Isay, founder of StoryCorps and author of a book about the project: Listening Is an Act of Love: A Celebration of American Life from the StoryCorps Project. The book contains some of the most compelling stories the project has collected. Call 414-286-3572 for reservations.

(Studs Terkel, who’s devoted a lifetime to telling the stories of real people, says the book "is history in the richest sense of the word, the kind that makes people feel like they count. . . This is what our country is all about." )