Memoirous

I awoke Monday morning to a Blood Moon. Actually I went to bed Sunday night beneath the gaze of a blood moon. But it was Monday morning when I checked on-line to see all the beautiful pictures from my friends at Facebook recording the Blood Moon. Literally friends from all over the world were posting. I love the idea that we can all share in this phenomena as it will be 33 years before it comes again. I'm not going to say how old I'll be then, but for me it might not come again. Beautiful. Dirty orange. Tattered clouds obscuring. Friends on a rooftop. Dogs barking. Children allowed to stay up late. Sharing a moment. from Chicago Tribune

Congratulations to Ta-Nehisi or as I blogged only last week about this writer --the man--who has been awarded a MacArthur Foundation Genius Award which carries with it a huge cash prize. I remember when I first heard him speak at an AWP panel. (And, lets be honest, his body of work is not overwhelming. He has not written a novel and had at the time a published memoir The Beautiful Struggle ). But it was his non-fiction, his essays, his opinion pieces that spoke the loudest. Not like Trump loud, but a methodical common-sensical deliberate straightforward plain talk journalism that brought many more people into the "conversation." His writing goes beyond the echo chambers, the news media chatter, and the polarized position points that we've all become accustomed to. Genuine. In the article link above about the award the committee in fact cited his unique blend of "personal reflection and historical scholarship" about race relations in the US. The foundatio...

 I tune in to the three or four PBS channels we get automatically. There’s nothing on any other channels I’m generally interested in, so the last couple of nights I watched the 2-parter on Walt Disney. Such a sad/happy man who loved children/money/legacy. Yet certainly a visionary. It’s hard to imagine another country at the time who could have produced a Disney except a post-war America. That being said, I’m not sure Disney had it right with his City of Tomorrow. How does one go from flying teacups to Epcot, Ford and GE headquartered next to each other. It’s not surprising that corporations didn’t share his vision of utopia. The only place you might see clusters of corporate headquarters might be some offshore island. Remember when Walgreens threatened to leave Illinois and relocate overseas because they were done paying taxes? Epcot: concentric circles of progress, connected by a mono-rail. Not if the Republicans have anything to say about it, they’re constantly thre...

It’s always something new at Facebook—except a button to change things back to where they were. Lately they’ve added a new feature. Facebook memories. Borrowing from your own timeline, Facebook will post something from your past. The first couple of times I smiled. The memory was precious. But the last couple have been painful, which got me thinking. What about the couple who has now split? Or the accidental death of a loved one? Or any number of scenarios where the past thrown back at us brings heartache. I’m sure I can google and find out how to turn this feature off. I can go to Facebook support and under a pull down menu select what my problem is and then receive an automatic response saying they have received my message, and it is in the queue. Whereupon I receive another message asking how that response was. If my problem has been resolved. No, and no, and no. Sometimes there is no resolution to hard memories. They continue to haunt us, make their way back ...

  I don’t have very good luck with salon cuts. Probably if I were more decisive or picky it might help the haridresser. Instead I go in and serendipitously say do something. I don’t go very often. But I had this Groupon for a cut and color. The experience reinforced the impression that I am an old lady. I showed her a picture and gave her what I thought was a good verbal description: short and sporty. She kept showing me Pinterest pics of models with hairdos that require blow drying, gels, and a live-in stylist. She conferred with her colleagues and came back with pretty much the same hair style. It was someone I wasn’t. I didn’t know how to say it any plainer. Short and sporty. I should have said, Let’s forget this. But I was starting to feel like I might be wrong and just wanted to go with the flow. Again, this isn’t how a customer should feel. I was reminded of when I went shopping for my wedding dress with someone who had good taste and strong opinions...

A year ago I was in Sweden. It’s hard to say what I was doing exactly—it was such an amazing trip. Catching up with old friends, tea on a hillside overlooking a ruined monastery, picnics by big glacial lakes, swimming in those cold, cold lakes, biking, hiking, and those long incredible breakfasts. Breakfast has always been my favorite meal and the morning smorgasbord in Sweden hits all the high notes. A thick creamy yoghurt, Wasa crisp bread, and thin slices of cheese. Every day the sky was a miracle of bright blue. I think I have Swedish blood running through me. The way the sun moved and moved me, the way it hung and stayed up there for way past what would have been sunset for me back home. There are moments here where the sun is suspended and sends a golden glow over the landscape and my pulse quickens: Sweden! I went “after the season” which I’m not quite sure what that means as the temperatures were moderate. I’d ride my bike all day soaking up the sunshine ...

Remember the old days? Before the internet—I used to read physical books. Read poems that shook me to the core. I’d go to the back of the anthology and read the 2 – 3 line bio and if possible there might be an entry for them in the World Book Encyclopedia. Maybe not, if they weren’t white or mainstream. Of course I didn’t need to know someone’s gender (Evelyn Waugh is a guy? S.E. Hinton is a woman?), or their orientation (hello! Go Tell It On the Mountain James Baldwin), or if they were black or white. Countee Cullen was REALLY confusing. I got the work though. O nce riding in old Baltimore,     Heart-filled, head-filled with glee, I saw a Baltimorean     Keep looking straight at me. Now I was eight and very small,     And he was no whit bigger, And so I smiled, but he poked out     His tongue, and called me, "Nigger." I saw the whole of Baltimore     From May u...

Remember the old days? Before the internet—I used to read physical books. Now, of course, you can find it all on-line. I just watched a video this a.m. of Ta-Nehisi Coates talking about his writing process. I’ve got to admit he’s the man. If there is anything out there written by him, I read it because he’s the real deal. He said writing is about failure. Pretty much failure after failure, like one word after another. You write one crappy thing and then come back and fix it and then see other things that got to be fixed. Like a Whack a Mole. Writing is basically getting started and then changing it and seeing where you need research, where you need to pull it together. Relax and make mistakes. I write about this in Freeze Frame and 365 Affirmations forthe Writer . Montaigne called his style of writing “essay,” meaning attempts. Listen, you don’t have anything to prove. Just try to write that memory from your point of view; you don’t have to have all the answers or p...

Continuing on themes of the 21 st century—has anyone else thought about the irony: Trainloads of humanity stuffed into railway cars trying desperately to get INTO Germany.  Let this be a lesson to the 20 th century self who thought people can’t change, that countries are evil, that the world is hopeless. I’m sure it felt that way 100 years ago in the trenches and 70 years ago in the camps. Forgiveness is never cheap or easy. But here is a nation leading other nations to open their borders and accept others not like them but like them in so many other ways. Humanity washed ashore. I don’t need to post the picture of the little 3-yr old boy face down in the surf, on the coast of Turkey to tell you all of our hearts have to change. After Kristallnacht German Jews were desperate to get out, to flee what might not at first seemed like a crisis. No one ever thought it was going to get too bad. They weren’t at first asylum-seekers, but they knew that some...

I have been a proud Couchsurfing host since 2007.  making moussaka with y very FIRST couchsurfer Couchsurfing is where you stay with total strangers using the Couchsurfing website in order to connect on-line, matching hosts to travelers. I probably host 20 surfers a month, but that is nothing compared to the requests I receive daily. I tack it up to living in a world-class city, but also there just aren’t too many reliable and willing hosts. In the cosmic balance of things there are way more travelers than those offering a couch. Why do I do this—when of course it takes up a LOT of time. 1) reading the requests 2) responding to the requests 3) then the actual hosting? Because I love to meet people. Not always, and especially not when their train, plane, bus is late and I have to get up early the next day. But, because I have a memory of traveling and wishing I could get inside a culture. There was a time (and probably still is) when I wanted to go and liv...

According to Martin Amis, "fiction is the only way to redeem the formlessness of life." Without story my own life narrative would be rather bleak. I need fiction, stories, lies even to move forward. When I come across fiction so powerful it blows me away I’ll want to get on Facebook or run up to the rooftops and scream: READ THIS BOOK! I’m also lucky in that I have a good friend who reads and absorbs fiction like it ain’t no fiction, just like me. We are able to talk book. A language of intuition, that automatically assumes that most pain can be assuaged or distracted by an enthralling fable. I think this is how mankind has been able to continue in the face of wooly mammoths, armies of invaders, revolution, stock market crashes, hurricanes, job loss—all the marquee stuff that stops us cold. We can pick up the flag and go on if only we can carry a really good story around inside of us. Tammy read Girl Child by Tupelo Hassman and had a literal literary reac...

School is back in session in just a few weeks! Do you know any young adults who are gluten free and/or suffer from food allergies? I am sharing an e-book that I help nurture along. Jack Donahue has been gluten/dairy/corn free for over 12 years and knows how to negotiate the world with food allergies. Check out his book at Amazon, and download a copy .

The corpse flower, a rare and infamous plant from Sumatra that blooms occasionally, like every 7 years, and when it opens, for the magic of 6 – 8 hours, mostly at night, it emits the most horrendous smell. The smell of death that attracts carrion beetles and flesh flies so that pollination occurs. The build up to this event was on par with the Chicago Fire Festival that took place downtown last year which resulted in millions of visitors clogging the riverfront on a cold night to watch papier mache floating houses ignite. Except they didn’t. The whole thing was a dud. Poor Spike fell victim to its own media hype. He, she, it, refused to open. The natural signs leading up to the phenomena were all there, the anticipation was grounded in science, but perhaps conditions were not right. Anyway, Sunday morning the botanists knew something was amiss and cut her open to peel away the leave and reveal the maroon-colored spathe. These leaves were accordion pleated like a beautiful ...

Thursday night we walked up to Wrigley—not for a game but for the Billy Joel concert. Okay, not exactly the concert but for the atmosphere outside the stadium. We’re used to slumming it for dates. Case in point: we showed up with lawn chairs and set up outside to listen in. We did the exact same thing September 8, 2012 when we were celebrating our wedding anniversary. My husband and I were sitting outside Wrigley Field waiting for Bruce Springsteen to take the stage. And then this happened: “Isn’t that the guy who tried to pee in our closet?”