Memoirous

The year my daughter went off to college we received a card at Christmas asking how my husband and I were dealing with “empty nest.” I remember wondering, What does that mean? The four years Grace was away in college were some of the hardest I’ve ever gone through. We were extremely lucky she was accepted, beyond even what we could imagine, into an excellent school. And with all the scholarships and grants, there was a ridiculously small amount we had to pay. Yet I was stricken with terror: What if I failed!? Prior to this we’d taken a couple overseas trips (see European Schedule) where we did crazy things to get the money to travel. I remember once my husband and I submitted to an MRI for medical research. I took on cleaning jobs and made cinnamon rolls and sold them for a dollar. There had been a small smoke fire in a senior’s room and I got hired to clean the walls. I practically had to peel the goldenrod colored nicotine off the walls along with corners of black sm...

Several of my friends have kids with Autism or Asperser’s. It used to be caused by Moms called Refrigerator Moms because they were cold and unresponsive, then we blamed vaccinations, and now . . .? I’d like to think its corn syrup. This is how to start a rumor. Or maybe things just happen. Out of our control. I’ve always felt empathy for these children. The quirky ones with idiosyncrasies. The collector, the hoarder, the obsessive kid addicted to Legos. When I was 8 or 9 I got on a kick, cutting the vital statistics, records of births and deaths, out of the newspaper, and taping them into a notebook. I was looking for patterns. I created a graph—probably I called it research. Who knows what I was trying to prove. Perhaps I wondered what the ratio of boys to girls was or what day of the week produced the most births or even the most fertile month. Anyway, I kept track of this until my mother swept up my notebooks—which to her looked like clutter—and threw them out. ...

It’s cold days like these, the coldest of days, that it makes sense to me why people in the olden days didn’t bathe or change clothes very much. As a little girl I used to sit in the bathroom, the warmest room in the house, on top of the heat register and read books. It’s days like these, the coldest of days, that I’m nostalgic for that warm spot. Guess how many layers I'm wearing inside and I'll send you a FREE PDF of Freeze Frame: How to Write Flash Memoir

As I mentioned in my last blog I’ve been reading The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander.  I am aware that this book has caused much controversy. Many people are inflamed alone by the title. As a lawyer she is tying the increase in mass incarceration to the theory that black and brown minorities are the target of intentional, racially motivated profiling. Duh. I’ve seen this on the streets of Uptown, especially with the residents I work with at Cornerstone community Outreach, a homeless shelter on the northside of Chicago. All too often I hear from our local politicians that they are concerned about crime. I’ve come to recognize that “community safety” is code for clearing the streets of unwanted people such as the poor, homeless. That’s one of the reasons our alderman has removed benches at bus stops. Really? Is that why I see the elderly waiting, sitting uncomfortably on fire hydrants—because someone is afraid the homeless will use the benches to spread out...

I’d like to give a shout out to a fellow blogger and a GREAT humanitarian Jeremy Nicholls Jeremy Nicholls of Cornerstone Community Outreach in Uptown received the Chicago Alliance’s Fund Manager of the Year Award (Chicago Alliance Photo). Jeremy blogs at Setting Prisoners Free where he usually writes about the work he and others are doing at Cornerstone Community Outreach—the shelter where I wolunteer—and the difficulties and prejudices the residents face in getting housing. This goes along with some recent reading. I’m about a chapter into The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander and as a lawyer/writer/attorney/author she has a compelling argument of systematic injustice against African-Americans. Stacking the tables against men especially. I’ve seen it for myself. Young men who should be sophomores or just finishing up college—already have racked up a felony. And, you hate to say it—it’s too late. Man, what a waste. They can’t get housing. They can’t get jo...

I’ve been reading/feeding on HOW MUSIC WORKS by David Byrne. He is the kind of writer that has a lot to say about a smattering of everything music or musical. I have been telling my friends about one chapter in particular—How to Create a Scene, which deals with how to create a space for people to create. We all know art centers that feel dead, while across town on the wrong side of the tracks all the cool people are hanging out and making it fresh, making it alive. They’re all broke and struggling yet there is a there there. Suffice it to say one of his main points was that on the Lower East side in the Village around the Bowery in the early to mid-70s RENT WAS CHEAP. Yeah, affordable housing tends to draw the starving artist, creating clusters of young people fresh out of art school seriously trying to make it. Places like Wicker Park, Logan Square (used to be) are. Anyway, reading Byrne reminded me of his film True Stories which for me was a real touchstone. My ...

I’ve written at this blog before about media saturation. Where even something as significant as the War on Poverty gets churned over and over into a sound byte. Anyway, I listen to NPR in the morning and been hearing about the impact of this far-reaching legislation. At least that was how it was envisioned. I can tell you from my experience living in Uptown these past few years—it feels like a War on the Poor. When I first came to Uptown it felt like a VERY DIFFERENT place. There was trash every where, people lived in their cars, vacant lots were full of trash. Every weekend a building burned. I and a number of other residents worked to improve the lives of the people around us. At times it seemed like a war, being surrounded by rubble and the wounds typical of those living in poverty. I remember one guy, a terrible junkie who would come by for our neighborhood feeding program. I remember thinking, He could be my brother. He was young and somewhat attractive—as if he’d...

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I’m still working on my New Year’s resolutions. Maybe by year’s end I’ll come up with a few. Right now it’s about motivation, getting back into the writing/creating groove. Mostly I’d like 2014 to bring me health and wealth. I’d like for writing to become a career rather than an ambition. Perhaps brain freeze has something to do with my current lethargy. It doesn’t exactly help that the windchill is a billion below zero. All major highways/arteries are shut down. Blowing and drifting. I’m a morning cook. I make breakfast for 300 people—though today I knew it was going to be a bit slow as most people had the day off because of school/work closings. Normally the kitchen is cold when I come down, but after getting things turned on and the fan blowing it warms up. EXCEPT someone turned off the heat last night. Why you might ask—I know I did. Why the hell would you turn off the heat on a night when it’s the end of the world according to the weather report. The kitch...