Memoirous

I’ll be leaving my job soon at the bike shop and starting at a local version of REI in Okemos called Playmakers. This coincides with an effort on my part to get out more and meet people and broaden my network. A 2024 goal of mine after being in the area for two and a half years. Using Facebook, I joined a women’s hiking group that meets multiple times a week all over the area. So on any given day I can locate a walk and meet up! Before starting my new job, I wanted to take little break and planned a trip to Ohio. I’ve already got my bus/train tickets. I arranged an itinerary that takes me in a loop from East Lansing to Detroit to Cleveland where a college friend will pick me up. After a few days she and I will drive to Athens, Ohio for me to meet up with an old high school friend. After a few days there, I’ll bus to Cincinnati to see friends from my Chicago days. My grandfather lived in Cincinnati; it’s where my Dad went to high school. His school still stands. The couple told me the...

  These days . . . . I wish for a crystal ball, a Google button for an internet search into the future, a tarot card reader. When I was twenty, on the cusp of several major life decisions, I went to see a prophet. My evangelical church was holding Holy Spirit week, a series of revival services and a woman known to be a prophet was scheduled to speak. So many thoughts were rolling around inside my head. I was thinking about dropping out of college Changing churches Actually quitting religion I was considering leaving the country and had applied for a passport I believe all of the above would have blown my parents up, but I was grown and living out of the house. I’d already gone down a couple of blind alleys, figuratively, and was unsure of what lay ahead. I just wished I could see a mile or two down the road. I needed a map because I was afraid of making a wrong turn. I just wished I knew what it was I wanted  Now at age 61 I’m back here again . . . at the sam...

Susan Jordan, This American Life Radio and Memories Even on the radio I could tell: She was a nice person. I recently listened to the podcast This American Life where they re-aired a piece originally from 2001—the theme was A Return to Childhood, where Alex Blumberg went in search of his old babysitter, Susan Jordan, in “Ich... Bin... Ein... Mophead.” It was as much about how we remember and misremember than about how Alex eventually tracked down Susan using a private investigator. --That was 17 years ago. She must be about my age or a little younger. I could tell just by the sound of her voice that she was a nice person. It wasn’t said but I could tell as much: Alex had been secretly in love with his fearless babysitter. She was his champion. She would have beaten up a motorcyclist to defend her young charge, whom she felt a bit sorry for. Alex, she hesitated to mention, was a bit bookish and obsessed with stuff beyond his years. She was compelled to “play” wit...

I took a break from the KKK the past couple of weeks. Actually a break from blogging about recent events in Charlottesville. A break from the politics, the statements, retractions, mis-statements, arguments over statues, etc, etc, etc. It’s exhausting. On many sides. I’m from Dayton, Ohio, Centerville to be exact. A well-heeled community, triple A high school, definitely upper-middle class. But as a kid I rode my bike everywhere, anywhere two wheels might take me. I also met some friends at camp and often drove to Cadiz and locales close to it in southeastern Ohio, formerly coal country. Then later I went to OU in Athens to finish my Bachelors degree where I rode my bike and ran in the foothills surrounding the university. The Ohio I remember was this: colored leaves in autumn, small towns, Main Streets, hills, small liberal arts colleges, ravines, waterfalls, hiking in Yellow Springs, car wrecks on Friday nights. Conkles's Hollow State Nature Preserve Rim Trail ...

Memories have been stirred by the song Carissa by Sun Kil Moon or Mark Kozelek . Mention the state Ohio and today one might be greeted by several responses. Rust-belt. Went for Trump big time. Ground zero for pill mills. Overdose country. Craigslist serial killers. (That last one is not made up.) It has become a place of desperation, where residents felt left behind, misunderstood. Also the pill mills. They were rip[e and ready to be taken advantage of by shyster doctors and lawyers, using them for SSI money. Many have been left behind by an economy not built on manufacturing or mining. The population of the small towns has been decimated—the overdoeses don’t help. But that isn’t the Ohio I remember. Because many of my memories are colored by bike riding ( see even back then I rode way too many miles. Often too far to get home. More than once I had to call my dad from a pay phone to come get me because I was too tired or it was too dark for me to get home.) I remember...

Carissa Autobiographical songs, Ohio Sun Kil Moon or Mark Kozelek Left Ohio. Carissa was his second cousin, killed in a freak accident. Burned to death. Just like their grandfather. What are the chances? he asks in this highly autobiographical song full of melancholy and wondering, loss and unending questions. The landscape of rust-belt Ohio, devastated by prescription drugs, black-tar heroin, unemployment when the manufacturing jobs left, when the mines closed. I might have been drawn to this song because it deals with memoir, or because of the Ohio connection (I hail from there) or because of the voice. Nothing spectacular, the whole song is somewhat flat and not exactly full of emotion, but it evokes. It tells a story that demands our attention, because we all know someone like Carissa, someone deserving of a little poetry in their life, who vanish way too suddenly from this earth. He also brings us back to family, all those needling connections that we sometimes ...

What, may you ask, am I doing riding in Florida? It is similar to the question my mother asked when she found out I’d ridden across the highway. It sounds like the punchline to a joke—because I wanted to get to the other side. Because I needed to see what was there. It’s what kept me riding way past exhaustion, sometimes into dusk, trying to get home before catching it from my parents. I am 56 years old. Why do I do this? Because bicycling saved my life. I was a solitary child. I can’t tell you why to this either. I simply had a very hard time making friends. And, I can tell you, there were quite a few people I wouldn’t be friends with even if they asked me. I found most people my age disappointing. They didn’t read, or if they did, not the same books as me. I read a lot. When I wasn’t cycling I could be found reading books by the bushel. Again, a solitary activity. If I couldn’t make friends, then I’d at least make peace with myself. Find comfort and solace in my own ...

Bicycling saved my life. I wanted nothing more than to go somewhere. It started early—this obsession to explore. One of my earliest memories is of my father affixing wooden blocks to the pedals of a tricycle so that my feet could reach. I’m sure it was a tricycle passed down, a one-size-fits-all. I eventually out grew the tricycle and into a small two-wheeler with training wheels. I really wanted to be able to ride without the aid of the training wheels. I can actually remember to this day dreaming—or was I scheming, it was perhaps an awake dream—of gravity and the natural puzzle of how a bike, those skinny tires—how does it stay up? It didn’t make sense. Back then the boys my older brother Steve’s age rode Schwinns with turned down handle bars and racing tires. The inventors of the airplane, the Wright brothers, had a bicycle shop in Dayton, Ohio. As a school kid we were taken on field trips to see it. Huffy bikes were manufactured in Dayton. That was another era. Onc...