Memoirous

The other day in the car I passed a shuttered piano store. Like so many retail outlets, brick and mortar stores are closing up. Sears. Treasure Island. My favorite tea shop . People order things on-line. The tea I used to buy I have to order from Amazon. Virtually every place—in Chicago a metro area of over 3 million people—doesn’t offer the brand I like. But how do you order a piano. Drones can’t deliver it. Those people on bikes can’t run it up the steps. My UPS guy already has a bad back. Certain things can’t be plucked off the conveyor belt, packed, and shipped at an Amazon warehouse. Will pianos become extinct? In a way they are already a rarity, and the people who play them. And the neighborhood ladies who advertise lessons. All of this will become a thing of the past. We’re too busy with our devices and pressing buy.

When my daughter was little we were always losing her shoes. Not sure why I say “we.” Maybe because if I wanted her out of the house and to school on time, I had to become involved. Basically, I’d just look out the window. We live on the 4 th floor of our building and I can see down into the play yard below. That way I might spy her shoes mixed in with the wood chips under the monkey bars or by the splash pool area or on one of the benches. And, always, there would be Ann Marie sleeping on a bench. In my building the top three floors are reserved for low-income seniors. Many are only on Social Security. Ann Marie was queen of the house coat—a cross between a robe and an all-over apron. It can be worn over clothes or as it. Women of a certain age sport just a house coat. I’m almost there myself. She was also afraid to sleep in her own bed. She was convinced someone was out to get her. There was a rumor that her late husband had been part of the Chicago Mafia. I be...

--from a reader: When my mom lived in Ohio she made it to the State Final as a Quiz kid. All I could think of when I read your book. At my book launch I had a diverse crowd. From my contacts in the neighborhood there were a few folks who used to sleep under the bridge in the park, and are now, thankfully, housed. A few days after the launch ----- approached me and said, “I read your book.” I told her it means a lot to me that she bought one (on her limited budget!), and that she’d read it already. “Oh, that’s nothing—I’m half way through reading it a second time.” I really did want to cry. I appreciate so much her reading it once let alone a second time. “You know who I identify with? Hassan, the kid they made fun of, an outsider.” You see my friend grew up outside of American society. As a Native American she has struggled all her life with identity; how does she fit in this land, this country? Thank you friend for your kind words and thoughtful reading. Thank...

The other day driving home listening to the Kavanaugh hearing on the car radio I became nostalgic for Muzak. You remember, that inane background music you might hear in an elevator or dentist office. Maybe the pain of the hearing reminded me of the dentist’s office. Actually what I was yearning for were better times. Days where we weren’t confronted with anything more challenging than “A Summer Place” by Percy Faith and his Orchestra. As a kid I would have rather been taken out and shot than admit I liked Muzak. I mean the euphemism was “Elevator Music.” The kind of characterless, benign stuff my parents listened to. Yet, there in the car I wished to travel back fifty years. I wanted to be left alone. To not have to listen to a woman telling her story and a roomful of men dismissing her. Now to be honest fifty years ago Christine Blasey Ford would not have been called to testify. She would have been given “Mother’s Little Helpers” (a tranquilizer) and told to go hom...

Join me in Peoria at the  Illinois Reading Council Conference  on Friday, October 5 The theme is Read the World, Oct. 4-6, 2018 at the Peoria Civic Center My presentation is The Rural Child in Juvenile Literature