Memoirous

Check out an upcoming event in New York City. Liars’ League takes place at 7pm on the first Wednesday of every other month at KGB Bar in the East Village. Liars’ League NYC was founded in 2012. Selected stories are performed in front of a live audience featuring trained actors reading original short stories by emerging and established writers. Stories are also available via podcast at iTunes Store and Stitcher .  The event is scheduled for Wednesday, August 5th -  Short & Sweet - Flash Fiction. My story is a flash memoir piece titled: Fungus Among Us. Please share link=especially if you live in NYC or Brooklyn! http://www.liarsleaguenyc.com/

A portrait from the 1890s at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History. Susan B. Anthony said cycling did more to emancipate women than anything else in the world. Credit National Museum of American History In the late 1800s the bicycle transformed from the penny farthing, those impossibly high highwheelers, to something not too different from what we ride today—except it didn’t cost over $5,000. Just imagine all you needed to go beyond your village was to put air in your tires. In one day you could go further than you could simply walking. And, you didn’t need a companion. It could be done solo without the help of a conductor or driver. It didn’t matter what color you were, class status (even today I see a lot of homeless on bikes), or gender. Suddenly women could become mobile. Bicycles freed the woman. “Myself plus the bicycle equaled myself plus the world...

Before 1989 was the Cold War. There was also no grace. I remember when my daughter Grace was born the summer of 1989. In the middle of the night I’d get up and feed her. I kept a little radio playing by her bed for white noise, so that every little noise didn’t wake her up. It was just she and I and WGN or WBBM in the wee hours of the night. Then one night while I was nursing her within the glow of the radio dial I heard the most fabulous news. I use this word because it sounded like a fable. Often I dozed while feeding her. The announcer said the Wall had fallen. There had been tremors, rumblings leading up to this earthquake that brought down the Berlin Wall. Czech citizens were being issued passes to go to the West for holidays—once a rarity—and in Poland, Solidarity had made headway in their fight for workers and nationalistic rights. Ultimately Solidarity saw the end of Soviet rule and helped move Poland toward democracy. In my dream-like state I thought I heard the ...

New work is up at Mothers Always Write , a flash memoir piece titled Treasures in the Sand about taking my daughter—age 5 or 6—to the beach. What was I thinking! This place was a death trap.  Please share the link: http://mothersalwayswrite.com/treasures-in-the-sand/

I’m waiting for the latest installment, for the 2015 picture of the Brown sisters.   In 1975 I was 16 going on 17; I recognize a lot of who I was in the portraits of the girls. Now women. Now probably grandmas. Heather, Mimi, Bebe and Laurie. I don’t know them, yet I see them everywhere. The uncompromising stare, slight smiles or upturned mouth, but no teeth; strength born of change and the patience to endure whatever is coming next. Death, divorce, separation from loved ones, circumstances beyond their control. Lines and wrinkles, gray wiry hair, unadorned, plaited, pulled back, shorn, blowing in the breeze. My emotions are so tied into the life represented by the photos that if they are late I worry. I know we are all aging, and that time waits for no woman. There will come a day when Heather, Mimi, Bebe and Laurie become 3, then two, until one alone stands facing the camera. I feel their sisterhood, somehow included. The thought of losing even one pains me. So I...

I read an article ( Chicago Tribune ) on the Internet last week: That the Internet is Ruining Our Memory Basically someday our brains will be obsolete because we’ll all have smart phones and other devices reminding us to go to appointments, time to pull the laundry out of the dryer, pick up dry cleaning, make a left turn, buy birthday cards, etc. We’ll never have to remember another phone number ever. Most of the really important stuff will be up in the Cloud, and all we’ll have to do is type in a command to retrieve it or pull it down. I already google “that thing that somebody said” and other obscure phrases just to see what will prick my memory. Sometimes I have absolutely no idea at all of what it was I was trying to remember, but after googling and refining my search I can usually find what I was looking for. Now if I could just find what’s in my purse—but that’s another matter. The article talked about “digital amnesia.” In a survey (on-line??) 90 percent said that ...

It has been 20 years since the infamous heat wave of 1995 where over 800 Chicagoans died over a 4 – 5-day period of extreme temperatures and humidity. Mostly the marginalized: the homeless and the elderly succumbed. It was also during this same time that Marie James and I sat down to record her sad life story. Here is an excerpt from Orphan Girl: The Memoir of a Chicago Bag Lady. Nineteen ninety-five was the hottest summer on record in the city of Chicago; ­nearly eight hundred people died in July. The air was heavy, foul with the stench of rotting garbage coming in from the alley. You couldn’t find relief anywhere. Into the lobby of the inner-city mission where I live and work came Marie James—white haired, with blue sparkling eyes set in the midst of a wrinkled and dirt-tanned face. She had been coming to the mission for twenty years, looking for food and friendship. The mercury was already past 105 degrees, and I had no energy for giving. I wanted to be left alone and not...

Serious, everything I own is falling apart. Is this indicative of a life crisis? I need new shoes, bath towels, socks and underwear. Most of the clocks have stopped and the light bulbs are burnt out. My sheets have holes in them and the faucet leaks, the handle having cracked. Every where I turn there is catastrophe, the old things cannot be counted upon. And, I wonder which to fix first: the inside or the outside. I need a handy man, a stormy-weather friend. in 1 week I will see my friend Steffie!

These bright and shining days I read Mary Oliver and remember my little shack at the tip of Cape Cod, the dancing surf, and the plovers diving and darting, skittering across the sand. And NPS signs warning me to keep away from their nesting grounds. All hail the power to mate and love. All hail the powers that be. It is resolved. That all marriages are equal. She Wakes Early, Thirst, and A Thousand Mornings. Wide windows looking out upon the world. Thank you God. Thank you God. Thank you God. Thank you all those who have gone before me, leaving a trail of bread crumbs. Thalassa

Thirst By Mary Oliver Another morning and I wake with thirst for the goodness I do not have. I walk out to the pond and all the way god has given us such beautiful lessons. Oh Lord, I was never a quick scholar but sulked and hunched over my books past the hour and the bell; grant me, in your mercy, a little more time. Love for the earth and love for you are having such a long conversation in my heart.   Who knows what will finally happen or where I will be sent, yet already I have given a great many things away, expect- ing to be told to pack nothing, except the prayers which, with this thirst, I am slowly learning.      Andrew Raczkowski, one of several artists from Austin Special Chicago, who will be displaying their art at Everybody's Coffee , July 10 - August 7

It is now July and I went into a card shop. July had always been a big month for birthdays. My mother was born July 11 th and my husband’s grandmother Thelma’s was July 13. My father and daughter share a birthday, July 24 th . My habit is to take a walk or bike in the afternoon so I walked south on Broadway and found a shop selling cards. Looking over all the humorous and sometimes erotic ones, I didn’t think they were quite right. Then there are the earnest ones that don’t seem to work either. I just need something which says I love you. I miss you. I wish you were here. I wish things could stay the same. Always. But most of my July birthdays are gone, and though my daughter lives quite close we don’t see each other as much as we used to. Her two jobs keep her busy. So I left empty-handed and walked home, dreaming that maybe I would just pick up the phone and give them a call. in memory of Fred Burkhart, would have been 74 on June 23rd ...

For 28 years summer meant Cornerstone Festival. Beginning in 1984, I and my family would make the familiar odyssey out to the festival grounds. This year would have been our 32 nd festival. More than half my life was Cornerstone Festival. My engagement picture was taken at the fairgrounds in Lake County following Cornerstone ’86. I was EXTREMELY pregnant while at Cornerstone ’89, aptly named Family Reunion. https://vimeo.com/43124052 By the time my daughter was a year old we had moved the festival to Bushnell, Illinois where we had purchased some property for the express purpose of holding the festival there. It seemed like we might be able to stay forever. 2012 was the end of the run. Chalk it up to a downturn in the economy, an aging Jesus population, other concert options—but we had seen a significant decrease in attendance after our peak years of 2000 and 2001 where the festival drew close to 20,000. Cars lined up days in advance of opening day. There evolved a whol...