Memoirous

Intervals (description below*) put out a call for work reflecting places no longer there. Not abandoned, but lost now to time. Erasure. * Intervals  is an experiment in call and response—between prompt and reply, between  Pictura  and its contributors. Each exchange becomes part of a continuing conversation, carried on in the spaces between our regular issues. Hidden Valley Ranch is an example of something tucked away in my writing portfolio, a flash memory/vignette of family vacations to central Kentucky to Hidden Valley Resort. The word resort here used very broadly to mean a family-owned and operated seasonal tourist “destination” featuring a swimming pool, barn dances, outdoor game area, and guided horse rides. I thought I was the only one, but when I first wrote about Hidden Valley and posted it on my blog over 12 years ago, I was surprised at the number of responses from readers Googling and finding my memoir post. These folks also remembered Hidden Valley and ...

Memoirous is about memories. Memory-ish. Last week I taught a class in Winnetka, at OCWW (Off-Campus Writers Workshop. Not sure why campus, because we are definitely not on any campus.) I led a seminar on writing memoir. My abilities are of the –ous and –ish variety. A kind of instructing where I tie in life experience and what I think of as horse sense. Reaching back in our mind for a memory, and from there building. One memory leading to another. Preparing for the class I had a synapse flash of memory. It was triggered from reading the Collected Poems of Ron Padgett, a second-generation poet of the New York School (which was never a school—just as OCWW was never on a campus). There was a line hidden Valley Ranch and immediately I wanted to Google my memory banks. As a kid my family went two or three times to a horse farm in Kentucky—not even to the horse farm country of that state, closer I believe to the wasteland side, where nothing grows except commercial real estat...