Memoirous

  originally from April 18, 2018 Readers of this blog know that I am addicted to Antiques Roadshow. I watch mostly for the description. Crenulated. Wingback. Bezel. That thing on the top of cabinet clocks. When is an object more than just a thing—when you hear one of the Keno brothers go into detail about it. You come to understand it is the sum of the parts, the work invested, the craftsmanship. One of the appraisers was evaluating a book of police mugshots from Portland, Oregon circa 1900s. The term she used to describe it was vernacular, as in vernacular photos have become very popular. Here’s how Daile Kaplan defined the term: The photography of the everyday, the photography that's a record, that's a document, that has a historic truth. This is also how I might define flash memoir. This is not the letter from Abraham Lincoln or the guy who found the Rembrandt in the trash. This is more like the story behind the toy train. I got it for Christmas one year and it’s been in our...

First off: I'm a HUGE Antiques Roadshow fan. Last night I was watching an episode from Iowa and someone brought in what was called memory art. It could specifically be defined as folk art--because someone not famous made it. It was a plaster of paris tower embedded with a woman's junk drawer artifacts: her life. There were marbles, coins, hair pins, even a tooth. How much more was not represented--laundry lists, grocery store receipts, the number of hours spent staying up with a sick child? What about all the stuff she was unable to attach to wet plaster? It was really cool and worth something--but still not near enough of what the woman's life contained. How much do dreams cost? A dream deferred. Still, the idea got me thinking about memory and how a person can make memory visible, give it dimension, apply a texture.If you were to build a Memory Tower--what would it contain? What would you want your relatives or descendants to remember you by?