Memoirous

I discovered a letter you wrote to me dated 8/6/83. It was slipped into the pages of an old cookbook. What was I doing thirty years ago—making gravy? You had just gotten married and were expecting a baby. I was still single. “Where does the time go?” you asked in the opening line. Your dad recently retired. That’s when your dad was still living as was mine. Before the fragile brittleness of mortality entered in. You say you’d love to come to Chicago, but your husband has a new job and can’t get away. In Lima, Ohio. “Well,” you write, “you have to start somewhere.” We’d become friends while freshmen in high school. Different schools. I still cannot remember the exact circumstances, but it involved Young Life and meetings with guitars and exuberant singing. “It Only Takes a Spark to Get a Fire Going.” We ended up sitting next to each other and at one point in the song you turn to the person next to you and “pass it on.” The summer before tenth grade we volunteered t...

The high school quarterback is dead. Cory Montieth died last week of a drug overdose. During those heady halcyon days of high school (or TV high school) it’s hard to imagine death. The end is as far away as the beginning. Everything is fluid and in progress and seemingly forever. Though, as with many a graduating senior, it is equally hard to imagine what’s next. After the ceremony, the parties, and a summer that feels like intermission—before starting the next big thing—the recent graduate can put off the future, at least until the fall. Sure there are expectations: possibly college, to suddenly grow-up, to start acting responsible, or suck-up and get a job, but that is out there, not now. Yet with the passing of time the high school football star fades, the incoming class of freshman forget his name, because what matters to them is now. Eventually the golden glory tarnishes. The next thing arrives and one has to start all over again. Some can make the adjustment, som...

I just found out Maurice Sendak was gay. Not that it matters. I was at the library and there was a new book on the shelf—Maurice Sendak’s last book, My Brother’s Book . I picked it up to read the jacket notes and discovered that the book pays homage to Sendak’s brother, Jack, whom he credited for his passion for writing and drawing. But not only that, it is a memorial to Sendak’s late partner Eugene Glynn. Partner? I wiki’ed Sendak. I had read many articles about Sendak when he was alive and always followed his career, but yet I knew nothing of his personal life. Sendak had lost both his brother and partner before his own death at age 83 last year. And, yet , the saddest part of reading his bio at wiki, was that he’d recently came out (at age 80). From a NYT interview : “All I wanted was to be straight so my parents could be happy. They never, never, never knew.” Mr. Sendak added, “I just didn’t think it was anybody’s business.” I held the book and felt doubly sad...

Dangerous people rarely look the way we expect . . . is how Roxanne Gay (someone whom I read whenever I can) began her article at Salon.com "Time and again, the word “normal” comes up." Her editorial isn't so much about the Rolling Stone cover story as about the Rolling Stone cover. It is about--who is America, me, you, us afraid of. Seldom have iconic images such as the above caused so much controversy. May the discussion begin--and continue.

Hi Folks I've spent this recent heat wave in an unairconditioned room sweating over this blog--adding and expanding PLACES TO SUBMIT . Also check out F lash Fiction World, Volume 4, Edited by Vic Errington . This anthology contains over 70 short shorts, flashes from around the world. "Milk Teeth" by an award-winning flash writer from New Zealand named Leanne Radojkovich caught my attention. It is about a young woman sent to clean up a house left vacant with its elderly tenant passed away. snip ----- I unzipped the purse, turning it upside down. Four tiny teeth fell into the palm of my hand. ----- snip BUY THE BOOK to read the rest. I "met" the editor Vic Errington online (he lives and writes from the UK) when I contacted him about guest blogging for Flash Fiction World website dedicated to flash fiction. Many people working with flash think in terms of fiction, but since there are no true genres, they have been genuinely open to my submitting arti...

On the way out we started seeing the signs halfway through Minnesota. Wall Drug is like the only thing along I-90 WEST outside of the Corn Palace in Mitchell, SD. Neither are worth stopping for. In fact we were relieved when we finally passed it on the way out. Except about a mile away from it there was a billboard saying STOP! You just passed Wall Drugs. Geez, cut us a break. On the way back, driving straight through at night, those billboards on a lonely road started to seem like friends, greeting us every few miles, letting me know there was someone out there. The sky and road were pitch dark except for the occasional Wall Drug advertisement. So because we were hungry and perhaps curious, we pulled off. The town was hopping and surprisingly Wall Drug was closed. We turned into a DQ and had to stand in line behind folks in cowboy gear and Little League players to place our order. It took a while and combined with eating and lounging we stayed until closing. An employee...

We just returned from Yellowstone National Park where for a total of 5 days we camped and visited and re-visited my old stomping grounds. Speaking of which, we were lucky enough to see an unexplained stampede of buffalo in some far hills while out driving. We did a lot of driving. Far too much driving. After awhile we didn’t even bother photographing all the bison, elk, and deer we encountered in and around the roadways. Once we saw a mama bear and her two cubs. Even some of the geo-thermal features began to look the same. “Didn’t we already see this hot pot yesterday?” That’s why when we were at Old Faithful—often ending up there, as our daughter is working at the site—seeing the geyser go off a total of 5 times, we decided on our last pass through to skip watching it (people were lining the basin which they do when eruption is imminent). Yet, unbelievably, the employees never seem to get enough of Old Faithful. Each of the 5 times (almost 6) I observed employees come to the wi...

Normally this time of year I am at Cornerstone Festival . But not this year. I'm leaving tomorrow for Yellowstone where we'll get to see if our daughter really can make a bed with tight corners. She works at Old Faithful in housekeeping. It has been 32 years since I was last at Yellowstone and though some changes take thousands of years, millions, billions, I know a lot has changed at Yellowstone since I last worked there. Since that time the black mountain beetle has decimated the stands of lodgepole pines, a species of fir tree that one would have thought would NEVER go away--just like carrier pigeons--there were so many. So populous in fact that a great lodge was constructed of nothing but lodgepole pines. The Old Faithful Inn, the largest log cabin hotel in the world. Also after I left the park a wildfire got out of control--back then the policy was let it burn, as controlled burns and other contained wildfires were actually good for the ecology and for the nation...

I wrote this poem last year, late spring, before the last Cornerstone Festival. This week I would have been there at the fest grounds, in Bushnell, possibly at the Wal-Mart in Macomb. This is for all of you--writing your memories at Cornerstone Memories , because now is what we have left. Now is all there is Now is all there is. We never once thought it would change. There would always be dusty roads and distances to cover And egg water and mildewed hay bales and volleyballs hitting us in the head. There would always be long lines, too many people, and heat That descended like a sweat fog covering the land like a pestilence, Or like a brick of congealed gummi bears left out too long. Every year there was summer and there was Cornerstone, We lived all year planning, scheduling, debating, Coming up with a theme, making T-shirts, producing press kits, ordering doughnuts, And yet we were never ready. Never prepared with enough golf pencils at registration, ...