Memoirous

April, new month, new vision I hate what’s happening in this country. It all seems so hopeless and my tiny efforts, futile. I see in my FB feed calls for protest, days of rage, memes. All that too seems remote, virtual, digital—whereas, I’m looking for something more analog: Present. What does it take to build a peace garden? I’d like one of those St. Francis statues of a bird resting on his stone finger. I want a whirly-gig that shatters the sun and sends fragments of facets splayed across the lawn. I want a place of solace. Let’s build it together.

Slowly the tide is turning. Temperatures in the 40s this week, rain in the forecast. I’ve begun work in the new garden. On the first warmish day in February I ordered a set of box planters. What seemed like a great location when I first planted 2 years ago has turned out to be a bust. Once the trees leafed out the seedlings were sun-starved. The tomatoes and everything else planted there became stunted and kale leaves lacey with blight. The plan this year is to create a whole new space back behind the shed where there is a strip of grass that receives abundant sun. I removed the top layer of grass and dug up the old garden and transferred some of the soil to the denuded path. Then I can rake some leaves over it and let it mulch for the next 6 weeks until planting (sometime after the first of May). The new path is approx. 8 x 4 I’ll continue to use containers for the tomatoes, peppers, and thyme. There will also be porch mint and basil. The seedlings wait-on their little heat ma...

Tranås at the Fringe is an international arts festival taking place in Tranås, Sweden, featuring litterature, film, dance, theater and concerts. I’ve been invited to participate and will give a Flash Memoir Workshop while there visiting my friend from college. May 1, I am giving a Zoom workshop hosted by Northside Chicago chapter of SCBWI. Would love to see you there!

I submitted to Redrosethorns back in bleak February—who am I kidding, they’ve all been bleak lately. Anyway, I submitted a small snippet for a themed submission call around aging. Even though I don’t feel old, nor am I old old, stuff has come up, stuff I can no longer ignore. Such as, How do I get up off the floor now that I’m down here? Rredrosethorns is a woman-owned educational publication that promotes mental health and advocates for gender and sexuality education. I sent over their transom (again, showing my age) a poem/prose, prose poem about how it feels to be old/not old. It started with a list of observations about my body. I know, I lnow I run, I ride my bike, but there’s still the stairs at the end of the day. Someone’s going to have to get me up there—and it’s going to be me. Anyway—I made up a list and thought about it some more, then forgot about it, and then pulled it out (again, showing my age—it was there all along in a digital file) and spruced it up and sent it....