Memoirous

I took a break from the KKK the past couple of weeks. Actually a break from blogging about recent events in Charlottesville. A break from the politics, the statements, retractions, mis-statements, arguments over statues, etc, etc, etc. It’s exhausting. On many sides. I’m from Dayton, Ohio, Centerville to be exact. A well-heeled community, triple A high school, definitely upper-middle class. But as a kid I rode my bike everywhere, anywhere two wheels might take me. I also met some friends at camp and often drove to Cadiz and locales close to it in southeastern Ohio, formerly coal country. Then later I went to OU in Athens to finish my Bachelors degree where I rode my bike and ran in the foothills surrounding the university. The Ohio I remember was this: colored leaves in autumn, small towns, Main Streets, hills, small liberal arts colleges, ravines, waterfalls, hiking in Yellow Springs, car wrecks on Friday nights. Conkles's Hollow State Nature Preserve Rim Trail ...

End of August and my memories roll around to Fred. Fred Burkhart legendary artist and photographer, and, most importantly FRIEND died August 30, 2014. Wow, Fred has it been 3 years? I wonder what Fred would be thinking these days. You see he was a pioneer, taking photos (not taking he’d say, the subject gave him their images, their permission) of the early Gay Pride parades in New Town now Boys Town. He also did a photo series on the Ku Klux Klan. He was able to draw them in, never saying he believed what they did, but in general, being a curious, open guy. They invited him into their homes. He had photos of a KKK member and his kids eating breakfast, he had pics of the kids dressed up in dad’s KKK outfit, saluting a Nazi flag. They were incriminating, astoundingly honest photos. photo credit: Fred Burkhart Until a member asked, “When are you going to join us, bro?” “I'd join the Girl Scouts before I joined you clowns,” Burkhart replied. That led to a beatin...

I know we’re a few weeks off from Labor Day (it’s coming up quick!) Still ruminating about “Wichita Lineman” the Glen Campbell song, and the line: I know I need a small vacation.  http://memoirouswrite.blogspot.com/2017/08/wichita-lineman.html As I mentioned Jimmy Webb who wrote the song lyrics was in the midst of a couple of projects and on deadline when Campbell called him requesting another hit song. No biggie. I’m sure he had to go for stream-of-consciousness kind of composing, randomly stringing thoughts, lines, phrases together. Perhaps he thought I need a small vacation. As soon as I get done with all this I’m taking off, splitting town. I’ve been conferring with a couple of engineers working on the CTA Wilson Red Line renovation for a photo exhibit at Everybody’s Coffee. We talked about representing all aspects, all the different kinds of laborers who contributed to getting this project done. It was a complete tear down of both tracks and station and rebuil...

We’re supposed to get 80 - 85% coverage. If there is no cloud cover. Of course we’re not supposed to look directly at the sun. My friend Beth Finke had an interesting take on all this. Here is her memory of a solar eclipse as a child. “On March 7, 1970 using a pinhole camera our school teachers taught us to make out of cardboard shoeboxes.” She goes on to relate that she is now blind (totally unrelated to the eclipse). And that there is an app for those who cannot see it this year. Here is a link to her blog post and to the app—to give you a virtual experience. NASA (@nasa on Twitter) is also live streaming the eclipse which is set to begin here in Chicago at 11:54 a.m with maximum eclipse at 1:19 pm. I’ve made for me and my friends view boxes. For instructions on how to make one of these is less than 10 minutes go here . AND, more importantly, there is an ambiance soundtrack, NPR has put together a list. So has Spotify https://www.space.com/37823-total-solar-ecl...

New work accepted at  https://www.tendernessyea.com/about-1 / I submitted because I liked the look of these rambunctious girls--editors and founders of tenderness, yea tenderness, yea  was founded after a series of readings in new orleans, when we realized all the best writers we knew didn’t have a place to put their work. it’s a place for them, and a place for you too.  we understand that the word tenderness means  “kindness and gentleness” as well as “a sensitivity to pain”, we want to know what this word means to you, as well as how the multitudes of its definition intersect.  tenderness, yea  is jo gehringer, zoë blair-schlagenhauf, and amelia seidel. please excuse our mess.  I liked the idea that they were going out there and doing something. Crazy, I know. We all need to be a little crazy. Will post when the piece is up. Until then, keep submitting.

This is the phrase that keeps popping up inside my head. What does this mean? It’s a bit like pre-destination. People are either born with it or without. Despite DNA, personality, determination, physical ability. A master race is about who your parents and grandparents are. The color of your skin, the color of your eyes, the shape of your lips, nose. Growing up, even as a little kid, I knew all these distinctions who so unfair. Yet, I didn’t know what to do. I remember my father shouting at the TV, at a black football player, C’mon you spook, pick up the ball! I remember Howard Cosell, TV sports commentator, calling an African-American player a monkey. My father referred to Brazil nuts on the bridge mix as “nigger toes.” I also remember a tension rising up inside of me, an inner voice whispering: This isn’t right. No one had to tell me. Of course I was curious. Were Jews schemers? Money grabbers? I had no idea, I’d never met any. Until one day in 3 rd grade for sh...

New story "Seeking Asylum" up at http://www.kallistogaiapress.org/2017/07/ excerpt: “Things are a little crazy right now,” I tried to explain about the mess. My idea of crazy must be on a whole other planet from what was going on in Venezuela. I mean it was like Mad Max meets The Hunger Games down there. In an oil-rich/cash-poor country with empty grocery shelves and a president in denial, life had gone from difficult to a death spiral. There were not enough printing presses in Venezuela to keep up with the inflation. People were killing each other in the streets for toilet paper. I may only be slightly exaggerating. I only knew what I read in the papers and from Abraham’s essays. In his last paper I learned that he had been employed as an engineer. His specialty was hydroelectricity. Apparently Venezuela was powered not only by oil reserves but by water—except that there was a drought and levels in the reservoirs had fallen. Whole sections of the country were witho...

Glen Campbell passed away last week. I really hadn’t listened to him for years. As a memoirist and someone interested in memories I was drawn to his heartbreaking song “I’m Not Going to Miss You”: the obvious reason being that he will no longer remember the people who once populated his memories. Campbell was about to enter the last stages of Alzheimer’s. As I read the numerous tributes to him I came across a piece about one of his signature songs, “Wichita Lineman” and how it came to be. Jimmy Webb wrote the lyrics. He’d delivered on “By the Time I Get to Phoenix” and “Galveston” for Campbell. He was called upon at the last minute for a song to complete an album. Campbell was in the studio and needed something ASAP. And, could it be another town song. From the BBC Culure : "They called me and said, 'Can you write us a song about a town?'" he recalled in a Radio 2 documentary about Campbell's career. "And I said, 'I'm not sure I want...

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This weekend I began reading The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen.  It is literally the story of a sympathetic narrator. In this day and age of what sometimes feels like a civil war to read a novel from the point of view of a character living in a partitioned country and can yet understand life on both sides is truly refreshing. He puts himself into the head of a cast of characters—even the ones he has to compromise and kill in order to advance ideology. It’s complicated. Viet Thanh Nguyen recently wrote an article: "Trump Is a Great Storyteller. We Need to Be Better." 11 December 2016. This is an articulate essay written by an immigrant about the importance of words. When we allow leaders to subvert language and use rhetoric to alienate and hurt their own populations, then we have to stand up—call a lie a lie. It’s interesting that since his election, several great authors have spoken up about their fears. Aleksandar Hemon has written several pieces around...

Is there a prophet? Growing up I thought the strangest people ever were prophets. Of course, I was a strange little kid. All on my own I set out to read the Bible cover-to-cover. I also set out to read all the books in my elementary school library. I didn’t even make it through all the As. But I did manage to read all of these: A little heavy on the male hero, but that was the times! Back to Old Testament prophets.  Amos, Hosea, Micah, Obadiah, Haggai, Habakkuk. Believe me you don’t want to be these people. They were weird, boring, and pretty much friendless. They were obsessed, driven, and ridiculed. I was constantly worried that God might call me to be a prophet and I’d end up even worse off than being the middle school oddball I already was. But lately I’ve been wondering: Who will stand up to the powerful? Who will speak truth to bullies? Who is going to risk their reputation to defend the poor? Basically a prophet, someone with nothing else to lose, som...

P aterson Directed by Jim Jarmusch Movie Review William Carlos Williams’ work was about capturing a moment. There are times when his work reminds me of Walt Whitman in its laudatory celebration, for example, of Paterson, NJ. (I know New Jersey, really.) And, at other times, his poems seem a lot like the New York School. He was a contemporary of Frank O’Hara, though much of his work pre-dates the NYS. Nevertheless, he was influential in his simplicity and taking a snapshot of everyday life and holding it up. It is what it is=a wheelbarrow, but it is also grander than that=it’s red, the chickens are white. What isn’t mentioned is that it is a clear crisp morning, the kind where you feel alive. Glad of that particular moment. In the movie Paterson, Adam Driver, is a bus driver named Paterson. Is there some synchronicity here? He observes. Through his lens we see: Waterfalls A glass Matchbox A mailbox askew Series of twins He sees patterns in Paterson. Is it a...

War & Turpentine Stefan Hertmans, translated by David McKay Book review War & Turpentine is an autobiographical novel based upon the experiences of the author’s grandfather during World War I. Maybe. There are indeed some facts. The author’s grandfather, born in 1891, died in 1981. “It was as if his life,” Mr. Hertmans writes, “were no more than two digits playing leapfrog.” Urbain, an amateur painter most of his life, left behind his wartime journals. Beyond this, Hertmans dives into his grandfather’s world, bringing us into the context and history of Flemish Belgium around the turn of the 20 th century, an industrial age where children worked long hours at dangerous foundries incurring hideous injuries that often left them scarred physically and emotionally, or worse: dead. Urbain at every turn faced hardship and danger—and this was before he was drafted. The book is divided into three parts. Setting the foundation of family history prior to the w...