Memoirous

  I’ve blogged here before about my friend Wally Bytnar or Grandfather Goose who tends the geese who lay on the rooftop at Weiss Hospital and have blogged here http://memoirouswrite.blogspot.com/2018/05/weezie-walk.html About the Incredible Journey that happens every spring when Wally calls upon Facebook followers to help him herd the mama and baby goslings down the parking ramp and down the block to the lake for their epic jump into the harbor waters at Montrose. Here is this year’s round up from a good friend and photographer and an excellent journalist herself, Chicago-native, Lyda Jackson. Today, I did an early morning 5 mile walk, but the most memorable walk today took place a little later. The destination was a mere 1/2 mile from my home. I accompanied some friends as they escorted a goose family, with 7-3 day old goslings to their new water home.   For the last 12 years, this has been a seasonal mission for my friend, Walter Bytnar aka "Grandfather Goose." Gees...

We’ve had a few warmish days here in central Michigan—but nothing to write home about. Since I work 5 days a week I’ve maybe hit a few of these nice days on my day off. Sunday was one of these, though, not without expected change. There’s always a but at the end of a weather statement. It got up to almost 80 and then came thunderstorms. Around noon I started off on my bike to visit a family living on a farm who are moving to Hawaii. They were selling off everything and I had some can money I’d been saving from deposits and wanted to pass it along to them. The wind was ridiculous, but as we know that doesn’t usually stop me. I had it in both directions I took at about 25 mph, constant. But the roads were great: light traffic if any at all and out in the country. Anyway, I noticed the next day at work that the trees have all budded and the magnolia trees up on folk’s lawns are almost ready to pop open. The forsythia bushes are in bloom. The daffodils are out and the tulips are righ...

 I contributed to an article written by  Alisha Haridasani Gupta  of the NY Times. She is a gender writer and has tackled some big topics in Women's news lately--notably the restriction of abortion rights in many states.  The genesis of my contribution was a call for submissions from the National Women's History Museum looking for "journals" or writing from women during the pandemic. They saw these years/this event as a point in time and history where women's stories might be overlooked. As caregivers as well as ESSENTIAL workers most of us during lockdown have not been inactive. We've had to take on more responsibilities than ever. In this piece are perspectives from an oncologist (just imagine dying during a plague--pretty much batting zero out of zero), a first-time mother--who had to enter a hospital for pre-clampsia  and hold out until the birth of her child in total isolation. The portions of the collection, as well as my full contribution, are online at...

Good Works by Keith Wasserman and Christine D. Pohl Eerdmans Publishing, 2021 This book has been out for 9 months now and I apologize it has taken so long. It was a labor of love. You see, I have been friends with the author Keith Wasserman for nearly 50 years. There is so much in that sentence above that I love: using the words Keith Wasserman in tandem with author. When I first met Keith as a fifteen-year old sophomore at Centerville High School he was more the author of chaos. No one would have ever dreamed he’d write something let alone his own name. He was sort of an eesh guy. But, then   . . . . We got saved. He changed, my attitude changed. We belonged to the same church. Keith baptized me in a dammed up gully behind his house, Me and my friends sent him cassette tapes when he went off to England to assist an evangelize one summer. He’s helped me through MANY crisis of faith and personal struggles. And never once have we stopped being friends. But this is a...

 War and Peace  for Max I am not interested in War and Peace , the epic sweeping drama, my attention is directed toward the Russian man lighting his pipe, his back against the grey exterior wall of the building, as he takes a pull on the pipe the embers ignite, his whiskered cheeks sink in and out like a concertina playing a lively mazurka where   the great bear dances. Tolstoy said War and Peace is “not a novel, even less is it a poem, and still less a historical chronicle.” I am not writing a novel or a poem nor history, it is about these people, the Russian man who, after smoking knocks his pipe against the outer wall, the sooty tobacco, dregs from the bowl onto the ground, takes a stroll down the city sidewalk and suddenly greets a stranger at a bus stop. He would never do this in his country, in St. Petersburg, where there people on the street do not greet one another, they go along with eyes on the ground, downcast, absorbed in their own thoughts of bread, ren...

 My townhouse is on the way to the dog park My townhouse is on the way to the dog park. In the evenings now that it is staying light later, I’ll sit at my kitchen table and watch residents trumble past, absorbed into their phones, or staring straight ahead, or engaged with their pet. I’ve come to recognize the different “couples.” The bearded man with his fat pitbull who resembles a pig. He treats the animal as if it is the sweetest thing on earth as it lunges and snarls at me, straining the leash that I pray holds. Good doggy, good doggy, he coos. She won’t hurt you, he tells me as obviously the dog wants to tear me apart. I let him live in denial and smile. Some dogs seem like they can barely manage the walk there and back. Owners in housecoats and slippers sneak out, hoping to avoid the cold and wet snow. There’s a skinny greyhound kind of dog that is entirely undisciplined, who goes randomly and whose adult ignores the rules of cleaning up after their pets. This animal also...

 Sorry, I can’t stop flashing about going. I’ve recovered memories of two more experiences I’ve had—using alternative plumbing. I was offered a residency by the sea at an old shanty on Cape Cod. I know, blessed. It was entirely off the grid. There was a small propane burner and fridge. Water had to be hauled from a pump that needed priming at the bottom of a dune behind the shack. The outhouse was not super close, but along the dune ridgeline after a slight slope. Again, the views were tremendous. We were instructed that after going number two to add a scoop of popcorn on top of the job. Close lid. Before leaving the residency we were asked to pop another batch of corn for the next person. Sometimes I would sit there and eat popcorn, watch the gulls or perhaps seals off the coast, and go. In 2018 I was on a cycle tour from Amsterdam to Sandnes, Norway and was up in the Telemark Mountains—after hiking in to a mountain hut. It was remote and fabulous. The sun stayed up until al...

 Lastly, another flash memory of going involves one of my favorite places, an undiscovered gem—until I discovered it. I went camping at Newport State Park Beach in Door County, WI with some girls. I’d never been before but was fortunately prepared—we had to either cycle or walk in a couple of miles—so we loaded down bikes, bungee-cording plastic bags to racks and handlers and the frame in order to get back to our reserved spot. Once there and set up, I looked around. No toilet block, no visible outhouse. So I held it for a very long time. The next day became critical—where does one go? The ranger had assured us there was a facility, but not one I recognized. I wandered away from our campsite early morning, the sun was newly hatched, and there were birds and a family of raccoons on the trail, coming back from all night foraging. I found what I thought was a deer track back into a meadow and there at the end was a partial wooden fence blocking a lone toilet. A wooden box with a h...

 Another instance of “woke” bowels was when my husband and I visited Turkey on another “world” tour. Each of these trips stretching us further and further from our comfort zones. Turkey was AFTER I consumed bad water in Albania and had a terrible train ride to Greece, spending a good portion of that journey in the cramped, undersupplied and unhygienic bathroom. What I felt was akin to death. After disembarking at the Athens train station we still had to find our way to a hostel in the dark with the fact that I might suddenly urgently need to use a restroom. But this memoir involves Turkey, the country after Greece on our itinerary. We visited Selçuk with the World Heritage site of the Ephesus Library ruins. After a few days there we booked an overnight bus to Göreme. In Turkey motor coach is the main form of public transportation. Truck stops function as desert oases, where out of complete darkness comes a pin prick of light, closer and closer through the square of window. Attend...

Apparently I’ve been going potty all wrong—at least that’s what the little ads popping up in my feeds tell me. How do they know!? It’s a bit disconcerting. The little girl I used to childwatch in Eugene, OR had a toilet a bit like a throne. I thought the little steps were to assist little ones getting onto the stoiol—no, it was about better positioning. Maybe this is TMI=too much information, but, butt, it has recently created some flash memories. About going. On our first overseas trip, the Grand Tour as I like to think about it, when as newbies we boarded a plane and went to Europe, I found the world SO MUCH BIGGER—and different from North America. It was mind blowing that the Vietnamese food in Paris tasted different from the Siam Noodle I was used to in Chicago—same with McDonalds. I was assuming that things I once thought chiseled in granite were not quite. I had little imagination for exploring outside the lines. Yet, needs dictated that I pivot. So I did. The most glar...