Memoirous

Empathy and New Year By James Schuyler --an excerpt New Year is nearly here and who, knowing himself, would endanger his desires resolving them …. Awake at four and heard a snowplow not rumble— a huge beast at its chow and wondered is it 1968 or 1969? for a bit. 1968 had such a familiar sound. Got coffee and started reading Darwin: so modest, so innocent, so pleased at the surprise that he should grow up to be him . How grand to begin a new year with a new writer you really love. A snow shovel scrapes: it's twelve hours later and the sun that came so late is almost gone: a few pink minutes and yet the days get longer. Coming from the movies last night snow had fallen in almost still air and lay on all, so all twigs were emboldened to make big disclosures. It felt warm, warm that is for cold the way it does when snow falls without wind. "A snow picture," you said, under the clung-to elms, "worth painting." ...

I write on the back of a scrap envelope, a message from Target that my account may have been compromised.        Oh, well. The snowy owl teases us at the beach again,      flying from the peaked-hut of Daniel's Mexican Food           to a snow-packed dune, dirty with blown sand. He/She stands as an emblem,           elusive nature in a city by the shore. We have lived here these many years, never migrating --as opposed to the snowy owl we've come to observe--      lived in Uptown on snow-packed sidewalks,               dirty with trash trodden underfoot. We'll see out the old, say goodbye to all that is gone      to friends who have moved on           and to the farm, to the lake, the f...

Already this winter we’ve had a couple of snows with more predicted for this weekend. Yup. A White Christmas!! I was reminded in a recent conversation about a sledding hill I always went to growing up near Kettering, Ohio. It was famously named Suicide Hill. This was a real sled eater. Approaching the climb there were barrel fires fed by broken wooden sleds sacrificed to Suicide Hill. The hill was deceptive. Trees lined the descent so that any veering brought the sledder into contact with them. As a kid I was always bailing, letting gravity take the sled into it’s gentle good night, the tight fist of death. I cannot count how many sleds my brothers, sister, and I ruined. The back of Suicide Hill was just as dangerous as the front—though perhaps not as many trees. A ride this direction was longer and not as fast, but full of moguls or bumps that sent me flying. The community golf course where the hill was located was the product of glacial moraines: imagine icy fingers...

Bob Rehak was a young man in the 1970s who took the Purple line in from Evanston into the city to his job downtown in advertising. His passion though was photography, and what he saw from his train window as he passed Argyle, Lawrence, and Wilson L train stops intrigued him. There was a variety of life out on the streets below the tracks. Messy, disturbing life. I’ve noticed that many creative people are somehow energized by chaos, and Bob Rehak was somehow curious enough to bat away his fears, get off the train, and walk the dirty, trash-filled sidewalks with his camera and take photographs. Though I don’t know if he would classify it as “taking” as he describes people in Uptown in the mid-1970s though mostly poor were generous; they gladly gave Bob permission to photograph them. Uptown was a port of entry for immigrants because of the relative low-cost housing in the neighborhoods. There was a large population of migrants from Appalachia, social activists, the down-and-...

Mom’s Fruitcake Just the word “fruitcake” evokes nostalgia for some and crass jokes from others. It has been the focus of much ridicule by people especially of my generation. Today’s “kids” probably donn’t even know what one is. (Not sure if they’re lucky or not— see I’m still stuck in a fruitcake stereotype.) I’ll readily admit I’m not a fan of the fruitcake. Maybe it was the rum or the sheer density of the thing. An absolute brick. My mom’s fruitcake probably weighed 11 pounds once wrapped and ready to mail. I remember Dad lugging a couple of these to the post office every year about this time in order for it to arrive before Christmas. I couldn’t help wonder: won’t it be old, stale, inedible by then? I had no idea in my child’s imagination that these things are archival. They literally can last forever. For me now, with both Mom and Dad gone, the fruitcake is a memory touchstone. Mom would shop for the ingredients because none of it was stuff we had around the hous...

In 2 days I’ve seen 2 films by directors with the same sounding name. Inside Llewyn Davis was directed by the Coen brothers. We saw a sneak preview at the Block Cinema in Evanston Thursday night for FREE. Crazy. Then the next night we caught Museum Hours (by the director Jem Cohen) also at the Block. The same student was there taking tickets as the night before. I asked him how he’d liked Inside Llewyn Davis and he answered: bleak. I think I could agree with that assessment. Museum Hours was a visual masterpiece. Like most memorable art, it was a revelation of the ordinary. Whitmanesque. Cities of “hurrying, feverish electrical crowds.” “Never was there, perhaps, more hollowness at heart than the present.” (Democratic Vistas, 1871) Just as Whitman represented ordinary American life pre-20 th C, this film displays the hollowness of the post 20 th C. Ugly, urban landscapes beneath winterish bleach skies devoid of a sun. A film or haze settles over the city of Vien...

This time of year always stirs up a lot of memories. And one memory I had over Thanksgiving--actually people kept reminding me--was my mother's cranberry relish recipe. about 5 cups whole cranberries start with 1 cup sugar, but you'll definitely be adding more and 1 WHOLE orange, the whole thing I remember when I called Mom to ask for it--she made a point of saying, the whole orange. But I usually cut it up just to check for seeds and make sure that pimply thing on one end has been removed. Way back when, before what we now call a food processor, Mom had a huge kitchen contraption made out of die-cast metal and weighing about 50 lbs that did almost everything. It was like a wood chipper. A WHOLE orange was nothing for this baby. It could juice a rock. She had attachments she'd put on--like she used to make her own goose liver pâté .The thing actually had more attachments than her ElectroLux vacuum cleaner--another heavy-duty appliance. They were all made out of old ...

I just can't help myself--James Schuyler (my boy) seems to be saying in his poem "December"-- Each December! I always seem to think I hate "the over-commercialized event" and then bells ring, or tiny light bulbs wink over the entrance to Bonwit Teller or Katherine going on five wants to look at all the empty sample gift-wrapped boxes up Fifth Avenue in swank shops and how can I help falling in love? My sentiments exactly. Every year after Thanksgiving I cringe, sometimes actually feeling sick at all the commercials on TV and how the Christmas season seems to be one big Black Friday blow out sale. I can't stand the big news always focusing on how many people got trampled at Wal-Mart or what the retailers are predicting. Where every Christmas seems to be about overdrive and going crazy with retail frenzy. Then James steps into my heat, mind, soul and says it is so easy to be jaded until we see all the white lights or the colors or the carolers or one nic...

I'm in this: Click HERE for link to buy. AND, my story "Exit 24" has been nominated for New Stories from the Midwest  2015 anthology. Fingers crossed it makes the final cut. Thanks to Stoneboat Journal for setting this up.