Bennett Johnston has been passionately involved in serving, participating in and exploring the many dimensions of community in America. Mr. Johnston is the inventor of GinkGo!, the memory and storytelling game. He has dedicated much of the past two years to developing the game, reading extensively in the fields of cognitive memory, community participation and story-telling. He is a successful entrepreneur and business consultant focusing on strategic partnering for early stage companies. Since 1992 he has created several businesses and has been an adviser to more than a dozen businesses and non-profit programs in North America and Japan. Mr. Johnston was a candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives in 1992. From 1984 to 1991, he worked for the Trust for Public Land, where he served as National Director of Land Conservation. Mr. Johnston has also worked as a consultant to the Gorbachev Foundation and the State of the World Forum in San Francisco. He is a Director of the Center for Attitudinal Healing, a service organization dedicated to helping individuals and families cope with end-of-life and catastrophic health crises. He is also an active volunteer in the Glide Church Youth Mentoring Program in San Francisco.

He has been playing the GinkGo! game at the Redwoods Senior Center in Mill Valley, California for more than a year.

This is a thought-provoking essay that explores the power of sharing our personal stories and of listening deeply to others. It underscores the vital role that all of us, especially our elders, can play, in creating communities of vision and purpose, through sharing our life stories and personal memories.

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