Memoirous

Maya Angelou was an accidental memoirist, though she would eventually write six volumes about her life. She was also well known for her poetry, singing, acting, playwriting—the list goes on and on. I once heard Dr. Maya Angelou speak at Calvin College, at the Festival of Faith and Writing. She held us spellbound—in a basketball fieldhouse where we sat uncomfortably on bleachers without any back support—yes, she had that affect, to transport us out of our current misery and to another place. She was an encourager. Her personal story encompasses many lives. She was a dancer, calypso singer, streetcar conductor, single mother, magazine editor in Cairo, administrative assistant in Ghana, friend of James Baldwin, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X, and a Civil Rights activist. She was a chronicler of her time. She stood up. For women, for her race, for all people. ’Cause that’s how it is. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings her first volume published in 1969 was a

I know I left you dear reader(s) hanging. I was having a bit of a breakdown in my shack by the sea all alone. But, that weary dreary day broke this writer wide open. After that I began to write. And write. Write write writewritewritewrtite. I filled notebook after notebook. Split it at the seam and used the other side of the paper. Front and back. I wrote into the center of many questions, looking for answers. Dateline: Thursday at Thalassa Well a pretty good day. Yesterday I went into town. It took me 20 minutes to get out, Must be a record. Once I got to the road I took my time and in half an hour was to town and ate a sandwich outside thelibrary where I spent 2 hours reading e-mail and charging devices. Gave me some wiggle room with the phone, though battery juice will probably be low by Saturday morning when I leave. Also extravagant with the I-Pod, listening to news and music. All these little restrictions I've put on myself are coming off--all the counting of bread sli

Notes from Thalassa, Tuesday, after being there 3 days Just want to say that here I see real geese. Not those sidewalk crappers down by the lake that eat hamburger buns out of the garbage, but sleek Canadian geese with accents. Not the fakers by the Montrose Harbor Yacht Club who wouldn’t know Ontario from Ontario Street. Here they fly over like stealth drones, fit and in shape. No waddling. They catch fish to eat, call out to mates, and at sunset line up in V formation for night maneuvers. The geese by us in uptown wouldn’t know they were silly gooses even if you told them. They’d hiss and keep pecking in the grass for grubs or cigarette butts. They need to be secretly renditioned and turned into foie gras before it goes off the menu again in Chicago ** Wind from the north, White caps today. During the night I could sense a change, a shift. Items on the deck skittered into corners, a window not latched banged, until I removed the screen and pulled it in

Notes from Thalassa   It feels so great to Laze about In basic beauty   . . . And hope I have something to write about. I would not have imagined this 3 weeks ago! I brought with me a diet that resembles Into the Wild — And we all know how that turned out. I feel like a Jumblie (Edward Lear) set out to sea. I see now why artists paint it—because it is beyond words. Colors rendered in indigo, sienna, oxide from the earth, ashes to ashes, seed back to seed. The sky a Hopper blue, the dunes mutes, variegated by shades of green, rust, rosa rugosa like a Marsden Hartley painting. I took a picture. It was all grays with a line across the middle —or, depending upon the day, hour, minute hues of blue, sometimes dotted like an exclamation point with a sail way out there, motionless on the horizon. I have a vegetative splinter in the palm of my hand from where I fell down running over the sand to the outhouse. It hurts like arthritis in the morning.

Thalassa is a Greek word, meaning a sea goddess. Yup,that's me. Off to write flash in a small cabin by the sea and possibly the ghosts of those who have gone on before me (Eugene O'Neil, Edward Hopper) will inhabit me and inspire me.

Something I’ve noticed lately is a nostalgia for dive—or maybe it’s simply plain nostalgia for what used to be. I see it in blogs such as Lost City , Ghost Signs , and Uptown History . As soon as something’s gone we begin to miss it the most. Read here the Richard Nickel’s story of how he lived and died to save some of Chicago’s most fabulous landmarks. Recently I helped curate Portraits of Uptown: Photos by Bob Rehak . Between 1973 and 1977 Rehak a young copy editor at Leo Burnett ad agency downtown took photos in Uptown, preserving in film and now digitally what the neighborhood used to be. His collection of over 5,000 images is a virtually treasure trove. We had our opening reception Friday at Everybody’s Coffee and the place was packed out. I talked with several people who lived here during that time period and they all said what a great place Uptown was! Yet . . . you look at the photos and it looks like a dump, a dive, a ruined city. Trash swirling at t

Hi! Fans of Flash, Flash Memoir, and Freeze Frame: How to Write Flash Memoir I just updated PLACES TO SUBMIT adding about a dozen new places for you to send your work. Check it out! WRITE/SUBMIT/FEEL GREAT!