Memoirous

 In my last post I linked to Jeremy Nicholls blog Setting Prisoners Free . Jeremy was head of the Men’s Program with Franck and Andre as undersecretaries. There were more professional terms but really they were the guys over the guys. A few weeks ago CCO lost one of their main guys: Franck. He was only 53. I can’t remember how long I’ve known Franck—it’s been that long. Whenever I think of CCO, it’s with Franck in mind. You see, he started there as a resident. Franck knew homelessness from the inside out. He came to this country from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, from one of its iterations, from one of its many conflicts. He’d been unfortunately on the wrong side. He came and struggled with employment and finding housing—all the things necessary for establishing a beachhead somewhere new. After a stint at the shelter, Sandy Ramsey our director was walking by on the sidewalk and saw Franck and asked him if he needed a job, if yes follow me. He followed her into CCO...

As a writer I can keep writing despite the difficulty of getting a publishing contract. There are enough zines, magazines, and journals both print and online that will accept my stuff. With comedy you sort of NEED an audience—not only to become well known but to hone your craft. You HAVE to see what works and what doesn’t. It is very subjective. As part of an arts group in Chicago, I had an account with an online platform where you could send out arts announcements, find out about residencies or calls for submissions. It was a type of clearing house associated with the City of Chicago arts and tourism, from which I received several grants. Anyway, I put a call out for comedians to practice their set before a live captive audience: the men at our homeless shelter’s day drop-in program. We didn’t really have a name. When I came every week and Franck and Andre made an announcement that Ms. Jane was here, they called it the talking group. It was so casual that it was about nothing. I’m...

Cicadas make an appearance (every 17 years) in my novel CLOUD OF WITNESSES . At the end of the novel with several other apocalyptic events swirling around my young protagonist, Roland fetches his bicycle (late to school again) from under the trailer and finds it covered in cicadas.  I pulled my bike out of the rack in front of the school and shook half a dozen cicadas off the seat. They had begun to hatch earlier in the week, googly red-eyed insects the size of my index finger, emerging from underground near the roots of trees. They clung to whatever they could attach themselves to: mailbox posts, the carcass of the Datsun lying in the ravine, Granny’s vinyl chair. Soon after hatching they molted a tobacco-brown tissue-paper-like exoskeleton. I could barely walk without crunching and cracking them under my feet like dry leaves. Granny had taken to netting and frying them up in her black-iron skillet with a bit of grease. “Taste just like bacon,” she stated, wings and legs sticking ...

2024 is off to a fruitful start—yet not so much new writing from this writer. Pure of Heart came out in February in Fathom . A very sweet short story (14 min. read) about a simple girl, in terms applied from the past: a servant, who become ingrained into a family of middle-class means and how that relationship touches every member. I was inspired by Flaubert’s story "A Simple Heart". A few weeks ago my piece The Yellow House appeared in both the print and online journal Of Rust and Glass. After reading Rachel Cusk’s novel Second Place , I was inspired to attempt something similar. The brilliance of the novel was that it kept the reader guessing, I kept thinking something was going to happen, perhaps a murder or falling out, something to reward the reader for reading to the last page. But nothing. A kind of bait and switch, or just baiting. In the end people disappoint us, we’re disappointing, the narrative is quotidian.   Coin-Operated Press has accepted The Machine W...

I was super excited and also a bit anxious. Let me just say that reading through the employee handbook online was inspiring. Playmakers and my own philosophy of wellness are a perfect fit. That being said, the first training module following a fitter on the sales floor was challenging. The customer had always had trouble with collapsed arches and her ankle literally rolled when she walked. Yet the person training me was able to find the right shoe. I was merely an observer but clapped when the woman said her shoes felt great! I’ve only been there one day and can already see that there is going to be a huge learning curve. The nice thing is that my job is a quick walk from my house. I can be there and home in five minutes. The work/home balance is what I’m looking forward to as well as the camaraderie from staff in a supportive environment.

O-hi-o as my grandson Jack calls it. I was gone for 10 days. Not exactly a vacation as I ended up helping friends move. More on this later. I designed the trip around friends. Folks I had not seen since before the pandemic and even longer. One was my college housemate during my final year at Ohio University in Athens. It is in Athens Ohio where my friends Keith and Darlene Wasserman live; they facilitate a homeless shelter and several outreaches to the poor/elderly/children in southeast Ohio. Good Works was started by Keith while he was a student at OU when he decided to buy a house and invite homeless singles to stay in his basement. Very grassroots and organic. His motto is: Love is a verb. My plan after Athens was to bus to Cincinnati to visit Dave and Debbie who also used to live in the same ministry I was in in Chicago. They now work at a Catholic Worker house in Norwood called Lydia’s House where they assist families in crisis and moms and their babies with housing. I travele...