Memoirous

The latest Brown Sisters photo has gone up! It is the 41st, Nicholas Nixon started this on-going photo essay project in 1975 (the summer I was 16). Every step of his series I can relate to, the life stages of these wonderful sisters. I've blogged abut them before and continue to be fascinated by the 41 images. I wish them 41 more years!

I’m waiting for the latest installment, for the 2015 picture of the Brown sisters.   In 1975 I was 16 going on 17; I recognize a lot of who I was in the portraits of the girls. Now women. Now probably grandmas. Heather, Mimi, Bebe and Laurie. I don’t know them, yet I see them everywhere. The uncompromising stare, slight smiles or upturned mouth, but no teeth; strength born of change and the patience to endure whatever is coming next. Death, divorce, separation from loved ones, circumstances beyond their control. Lines and wrinkles, gray wiry hair, unadorned, plaited, pulled back, shorn, blowing in the breeze. My emotions are so tied into the life represented by the photos that if they are late I worry. I know we are all aging, and that time waits for no woman. There will come a day when Heather, Mimi, Bebe and Laurie become 3, then two, until one alone stands facing the camera. I feel their sisterhood, somehow included. The thought of losing even one pains me. So I...

I have a confession to make: I’m a news junkie. Or rather a new confession: I used to be a news junkie. Growing up my mother rarely watched the news. It embarrassed me how uninformed my mother was. It made me wonder—her lack of curiosity. She could care less what was going on in the world as she went about her daily life. If I ever tried to engage her in the broader meaning of life she might answer me with what we were having for dinner. It’s not that she didn’t have opinions; she did; they just lacked any sort of basis in the real world. I probably gave her less credit than was due. This is probably the case with most mothers. Lurch forward thirty to forty years later. It is so much easier today to be a news junkie. You don’t have to try very hard. Headlines are constantly shouting at me. There are 2 newspapers in Chicago and the commuter rag, The Redeye . That’s print, and I seldom see a real newspaper these days. But, also, there’s the ubiquitous Internet where ...