Memoirous

I'm pleased to announce I'll have an essay in Black Mountain Institute's journal ABOUT PLACE--the Peaks and Valley issue. From their website: "Black Earth Institute supports the artist as prophet and visionary who helps create a society attuned to earth’s rhythms and to the rights of all people." Yup, that's me. Actually in my piece "Ostrog Monastery" my husband and I take a crazy excursion from our hostel in Montenegro (formerly Yugoslavia, formerly the Balkans) up into the mountainous inner spine of that small nation in search of . . .  read the essay. Out soon. I'll post. Until then Grace Hertenstein has 2 new stories OUT NOW. You can  DOWNLOAD IT FOR FREE Her piece is called Foxcrow Hill and is best described as Americana. In the story a young man goes traveling, train hopping, hoping to forget a childhood friend that he might be a little bit in love with. Here is a description of Wayfarer from their website: The Wayfarer is releas...

“Let us remember...that in the end we go to poetry for one reason, so that we might more fully inhabit our lives and the world in which we live them, and that if we more fully inhabit these things, we might be less apt to destroy both.” ― Christian Wiman I’ve written here at my blog numerous times about funding for the arts. Endowments for the humanities. In other words: a handout. A piece on NPR this a.m. caught my attention—so many musicians are gaining an audience because of Spotify, YouTube, and other mediums made possible through the Internet. Yet the Internet is killing them. With downloading and digital sharing royalties are siphoned or greatly diminished. It’s the same for publishing. Without the Internet I wouldn’t have had 30 stories published. If I had to rely on print journals alone maybe I’d have 2 stories out there. But with the advent of hand-held digital devices, more and more people are reading from the screen—thus flash is growing in popularity. It is a f...

I just had new work published in the latest issue of Ruminate . Included in this issue is Shann Ray whose new short story collection American Masculine is part Job and part Psalms. He has an incredible way of writing description that marries the reader to the landscape--even an alien one made up of Montana, Spokane, and unnamed tribal lands. I recently read an article about him in Poets & Writers Magazine about his MFA process. Gregory Spatz, who teaches in the MFA program at Eastern Washington University, makes a case for why creative writing can be taught, holding up Shann Ray as a shining example.       Apparently Ray was a hard read in draft form. I think I know a little bit about this--aka "I can relate." There are many times when you know where you want to go--it's the getting there that's the actual process of writing. People tell me--that would make a great story--yet they have no idea what makes a great story. An anecdote is not a great story....

           Happy Anniversary Mom and Dad!

“Isn’t that the guy who tried to pee in our closet?” My husband and I were sitting outside Wrigley Field waiting for Bruce Springsteen to take the stage. “Who?” I asked. Herbie had been dead for a decade—or at least I thought. We had been married maybe a month and were living in an old house divided up into six apartments—some with shared bath. It was the early 80s in Chicago in a neighborhood coming back from blight. The remnants were everywhere. In the vacant lots, in the abandoned cars littering the vacant lots, in the boarded-up buildings bordering the vacant lots. It was nothing to see punks walking the sidewalks with tally-rags up to their mouths. At night the gangs came out with baseball bats to beat the tar out of each other, the sky lit up with fires set by landlords burning down those old buildings, the buildings subdivided, with bathrooms down the hall. Every morning I awoke to some new crisis, the ashes of the night before. And the occasional body left i...

Walking Past the Graveyard for Jhan Moskowitz, dear brother Walking through the graveyard (I have just missed eternity) And viewing the dates on the stones (all these were once alive) My own grandfather was born in 1879 (so long ago!) He was not so unlike the lucky stiffs around me (except he is a direct link to my past) Slipstream, a shift in time (there by the grace of God go I) Incidentally they have one thing in common (if not more, but one obvious) No matter when born, we are destined to die. And in this regard I am you Mother, Father, Sister, Brother, Our Little Lamb. *** I am beyond words, here, sorrowing upon the news coming out of Brooklyn regarding Jhan.  MY HEART IS HEAVY.

Young and Homeless Craig Blankenhorn for The New York Times Missy Race, 22, and her 10-month-old son, David Martinez, are living in transitional housing. Because she is unable to afford daycare, it’s difficult for her to go on job interviews: “If I bring David with me, I know I won’t get the job because it’s unprofessional.”  By CRAIG BLANKENHORN Published: August 31, 2012 SADLY for the children across America who are homeless today, neither presidential campaign is expected to pay much attention to them, with big policy speeches or new ideas about improving their situation. Multimedia Young and Homeless There are 1.6 million homeless children in the United States. I want to be the witness to this, to provide evidence of their bleak condition. I want to speak for the victimized children of our country who aren’t even fully cognizant of their own poverty. Infants, young children and teenagers are living on the...