Memoirous

All this week I have been having flashes. Memory flashes where I am suddenly reminded of something, and, then after another second, the flash is gone. Like so much in life. We had a baby, we had a little girl, we had this little tiny family. And then one day we are all on our separate paths. Maybe it is the holiday season that brings all this up. I am remembering all the hub-bub and chaos of Thanksgiving and Christmas with a young child. You see things through their eyes. Or maybe that is romanticizing things a bit. At the moment all we feel is chaos. The memory filters out the stress and I am left remembering the wonder. The pure joy. Little elemental transcendent sparkles like snowflakes on rosy cheeks—but only for a second, before melting away, and disappearing altogether. Each ornament, each stocking, each damaged school art project retrieved from the Xmas Decoration Bin pulled out of storage—each has a story to tell, some unintended spontaneous flash memory to...

In my flash memoir workshops I exhort my students to work on their mnemonic impulses, to take paper and pen and jot down that niggling memory that pops into their heads and in the next instance is gone. I had one the other day. Actually I get 6 or 7 in any given hour of the waking day, but they largely go ignored. But, this one, I actually wrote down. Cracking nuts. It begins smallish and then works on you. I asked myself: Who cracks nuts anymore? You see, it’s getting to that nut cracking time of year. And, on my counter I had a small bag of nuts given to me by a Polish man who said they were from his own tree over in the old country. This was around Marathon time when I was hosting. He also gave me 2 heirloom apples from his yard and those were the BEST APPLES EVER. So, I had high hopes for these walnuts. Except I had to find something to bust them open. All the while remembering. Remembering how my mother used to force us kids to crack nuts like chain-gang prisoners...

The latest Brown Sisters photo has gone up! It is the 41st, Nicholas Nixon started this on-going photo essay project in 1975 (the summer I was 16). Every step of his series I can relate to, the life stages of these wonderful sisters. I've blogged abut them before and continue to be fascinated by the 41 images. I wish them 41 more years!

I was riveted to the refresh button Friday night, trying to catch each news update coming out of Paris. It was unnerving. My husband was just there 2 weeks ago. Not that has anything to do with anything—except that more than ever I felt connected to Paris. I just hosted a family from France—not that they were directly in harm’s way, but to say I felt concerned. As I do sometimes on this blog I’ll comment on social media. For and against it, like most of us. Did anyone else notice that they received a safety check from friends in Paris? I’m not sure how I feel about this feature. I understand the utility of it, but am disheartened by the necessity. On one hand when there is a disaster such as the 2011 earthquake and tsunami in Japan, friends and relatives bombard emergency services in hopes of locating and assessing the safety of loved ones. The “helpers” as Fred Rogers called them are overwhelmed and if there is an easy fix such as that loved one pinging or checking in...

Because I volunteer for the Chicago Humanities Festival I am allowed a few free tickets. This time I chose to go hear Pamela Smith Hill who is the editor of Laura Ingalls Wilder's Pioneer Girl: The Annotated Autobiography and Laura Ingalls Wilder: A Writer's Life .  Hidden away since the 1930s, Laura Ingalls Wilder s never-before-published autobiography reveals the true stories of her pioneering life. Some of her experiences will be familiar; some will be a surprise. Hill clues us in. Laura worked outside the home beginning at around age 9.Her and her sister Mary (before her illness and eventual blindness) washed dishes at a hotel her mother and father, Ma and Pa, ran. There were times when Laura was not safe. Pioneer Girl includes dark material, details of domestic abuse, love triangles, alcoholism, and a near-sexual assault. This was LIW first attempt at memoir writing and had an adult audience in mind. It was only later, with her daughter, Rose Wilder Lane alre...

All the Light We Cannot See Anthony Doer This was such a beautiful book. Every word, every word was just so. But then I read a beautiful review of this book by my friend BethFinke that I asked if I could link/direct my readers to her blog . Yes!! Beth comes to her review from a very unique perspective and has also found Anthony’s writing superb because—well, I’ll let her explain. "I usually avoid reading novels and short stories with characters who are blind. Too many fiction writers portray blind characters one-dimensionally — we’re either heroic or tragic, bumbling or, particularly lately, blessed with super-powers. But Anthony Doerr isn’t like other authors . . . ." CLICK HERE for the rest. “When I lost my sight, people said I was brave. When my father left, people said I was brave. But it is not bravery; I have no choice. I wake up and live my life. Don’t you do the same?”

This week I’ve been writing about flash, particularly memoir. Saturday, Nov. 14, 1 – 3 pm I will be giving a workshop at Chicago Publisher Resource Center, 858 N. Ashland Avenue, Chicago . Memoir today is being written as fiction and much of fiction is comprised of memoir. Flash is about writing small and using bits of your life story. This workshop will teach you how to take bite-size memories and weave them into narrative. Participants will be given examples of flash, writing prompts, and also a list of places to submit their own flash. When I wrote the above blurb I was thinking primarily of a new book out by Lily Tuck which I haven’t read, but have been intrigued by since I read a review about it in The Washington Post. The Double Life of Liliane is essentially an autobiographical novel. Okay, there’s a muddle. Which is it? Fiction or non-fiction. Life is all about compartmentalizing. Except not everything fits. There are times when fact and fiction are ...

My last post was about a random bag of clothes close to 40 years old. Stuff no one wanted—except when they were returned to the former owner Patti Smith, she burst into tears. At the very thought, the memories the clothes brought back. Consider other infamous lost items. There is a history of art stolen through the ages, later recovered. The current controversy concerns art taken and stored in Nazi warehouses eventually winding its way back to the original owners. Or whoever. Museums are full of objects “taken.” I did some research and came up with stories of lost and found. Peter Frampton had an incident similar to Patti’s while on tour. His plane crashed—and his equipment in the cargo bay, or so he thought.   http://www.npr.org/2012/01/07/144799712/framptons-dream-guitar-recovered-decades-later Another mystery of a missing musical instrument solved: http://www.npr.org/2012/01/07/144799712/framptons-dream-guitar-recovered-decades-later There’s a group tha...

Lost and Found How many of you were captured by these headlines: Woman interruptsconcert to give the singer a bag of her possessions, taken from her tour truckin 1979 That’s right—someone gave Patti Smith her clothes back after 36 years. This blog is about memories. How many memories are stitched into the clothes we wear . . . or used to wear? The dress you wore to your son’s wedding, your favorite sweatshirt that always gets rotated to the front of the drawer, the mini-skirt that got you through your darkest days after the breakup, that sheer blouse that always makes you feel ravishing, that hopelessly out-of-date tie that you somehow cannot bring yourself to forsake. Who is it that said we are the clothes we wear? But, styles change. Yesterday’s punk is today’s conservative. Remember your goth phase when everything you wore was black. I wouldn’t be caught dead in an 80s dress with poof sleeves. The free bins are full of fuchsia jackets with padded shoulders....

Just like many of you this past week I was sickened—yes, that’s the word I would use—by a video that went viral . Viral like a disease that’s infecting way too many in our communities. A good portion of our population. I think it’s called racial prejudice. The same disease that drives some of us to download apps like GroupMe meant to spot potential shoplifters, but which turned into racial profiling . The same hair-trigger reaction that caused a shopkeeper to fear a really large black man approaching his store (he wasn’t even in the store because they saw him coming and locked the door) who turned out to be an NBA player. The young woman’s crime: She was texting. Obviously other kids had their phones out because there are SEVERAL videos of this incident on-line. People text in their cars and they don’t get pulled over and thrown to the pavement. (I wish.) We are a society used to live-blogging, simultaneously walking, eating, and tweeting. Congress does it when th...