Memoirous

Wanted to blog before taking off for 10 days where I’ll be OFF THE GRID. I’m taking a VACATION! Really it’s quaint. We have a trailer in the woods, a bit rustic, where we can do a bit of cooking, sleeping, and READING. But no phone, Internet, etc. Sounds like magic, huh. But before I leave, a few thoughts to my readers. Both of you. My husband and I were walking around an adjoining neighborhood last week and I noticed a food truck! Yay! So many up and coming cities have been getting roaming food trucks. Such as Seattle where the son of some friends of ours owns Skillet. Seattle has a way advanced street food culture. http://www.skilletstreetfood.com/ The parents were telling us about how hard it was in the beginning. You know, how they welded a truck from bits and pieces. You can only launch a project like this with the concentrated help of friends and family. But their son came up with a hit. Not only with his food truck, Skillet, but with his premier BACON JAM. Yup, Josh Henderso...

At AROHO Marilyn Robinson spoke about this. Of course I’m aware of today’s paranoia over borders, terrorists that have turned many people inside out to the point of demonizing the “other”, this was just the first time I’d seen it used as a verb, as in “othering” others. Basically the other is someone other than you. I know pretty broad. Yet it is only in the broadest language that one can describe something as all-encompassing as the universe outside of our self. Some people have attempted to mitigate this generalization by saying something like this: I’m not racist, I’m just not comfortable with a black president or what’s wrong with profiling—we need better border security. Well this is all fine except it is “othering”. A great example of this is in a book I referenced earlier this month: Wendy McClure’s The Wilder Years , where Wendy and her beau traveled to downstate Illinois to attend a weekend festival revolving around farm skills ie putting up tomatoes, canning peaches, making...

Employing a technique I picked up from reading Joe Brainard's I Remember , I'd like to wax nostalgic about the Chicago Marathon.  I remember when 6,000 people ran the marathon, yesterday it was 45,000. I remember when my husband who was then my boyfriend could meet me at the finishing line. Yesterday we couldn't find the finish line for all the people. I remember when it maybe $45 to sign up for the marathon. Someone yesterday told me they paid $160. You used to be able to run the Chicago Marathon bandit--meaning just jump in at the last minute. Yesterday they were ONLY letting people with numbers into the park. So that even your family, loved ones, etc couldn't even GET INTO the park to see their runner start. It was absolutely draconian. I remember when the marathon wasn't sponsored by Bank of America--and it was A LOT BETTER. We used to be able to glean clothes the runners flung at the last minute when the race started. We'd walk up and down Colu...

What is going to happen to people's memories--when instead of committing an event to memory or contriving to later describe it in a journal--we simply go, hey! and take a picture with our cell phones. In the future will everything of significance be recorded only on cell phone? Just wondering.