Memoirous

 A piece that was accepted ages ago and is out now. Hoot Literary Review is a postcard, Sea of Lingerie is their November postcard , which you can order--this from their website: The idea is: -to have stories and poems on a postcard, so that they can be displayed and shared easily. Stick it on the fridge! Tuck it in your husband’s/wife’s briefcase or nephew’s book bag! -for people to have a literary magazine that they can both afford to subscribe to and have time to read. Never again will you be able to claim that you don’t have time to read current literature! Each post card will have fewer than two “Tweets.” Except it’s not digital! The idea is: -to have a literary magazine that is excellent in a pure way. artwork by Janet Cameron –want to read more?  Well, you can check out  HOOT  online — which is equally good work, but without the postcard…because let’s face it, we can’t avoid digitalness completely. HOOT online follows the same standard...

Soooooo after writing last week about a perception that things were slowing down in regards to acceptances—I got another acceptance. This time from Ink in Thirds . From their website: Established in 2016, Ink In Thirds is a boutique literary magazine that publishes Poetry, Prose, and Photography/Art. The focus is on the emotive, visceral layers of the human condition, bringing artists and writers together in cohesive fluidity. The prompt asked for a prose poem and I had something on hand, in my portfolio. A piece originally written as a free verse poem and that I’d worked on to revise into a prose poem—about cycling at night on an October night along the Chicago Lakefront. I write this to again reinforce the potential for all writing and keeping a portfolio of work on your computer or folder/notebook. You never know when a call for submissions will draw out a certain piece. Along with this I’ve been revising a piece of flash memoir about Opening Day (deer hunting) and have had i...

Whereas, poems by Layli Long Soldier Graywolf Press, 2017 Roofwalker, Susan Power Milkweed Editions, 2004 Ever since I read Unsettling Truths: The Ongoing, Dehumanizing Legacy of the Doctrine of Discovery by Mark Charles and Soong-Chan Rah, I’ve read a couple other books by Native Americans. I loved Roofwalker , Milkweed Editions, 2002, by Susan Power (enrolled member of the Standing Rock Tribe) mostly because I’ve lived in the Uptown neighborhood since 1982, since it was a wreck. I was familiar with the Native Americans dislocated to Uptown. It wasn’t by accident that Native Americans came to Uptown. 1) There was again one of those misguided federal programs ( Urban Indian Relocation Program ) directed at Native Americans living on reservations, to help them get off their land and assimilated into mainstream society. There was an incentive to come down to Chicago—and back then there was manufacturing work. 2) Native Americans ended up in Uptown because in 1953 the Ameri...

Via Facebook—I know the thing we love to hate and is stealing our elections—at the Uptown Historical Group, I discovered the wonderful little photo postcards of CR Childs. These have been featured at the site several times and this weekend decided to check them out. Places to click were plentiful through Pinterest and eBay—aka examples of his work available to purchase. The subject matter seeming to be the Midwest circa 1900 – 1910. Outside of that I was having difficulty finding a bio. It seems as though Lake County and the Chicago Historical Societies have CR Childs’ postcards in their archives. Childs started his own printing company that produced these penny postcards. Regional photographer Charles R. Childs (1875 – 1960) was born in Elmwood, Illinois and worked for the Joliet Daily News before moving to Chicago to start his own commercial photography business about 1900. By 1906, Childs was specializing in real-photo postcard views of Chicago's neighborhoods and suburb...

We went to a Community Conversation last night at Uplift High School where the neighborhood of Uptown were invited to attend an area-wide conversation about race and faith. It wasn’t very well attended. But the folks that were there were engaged. The panel consisted of staff from Kuumba Lynx a performance hiphop education group operating within Uplift High School, Dr. David Stovall of University of Illinois/Chicago, Daniel Hill, pastor of New Community Church in Bornzeville, and Tuyvet Ngo of the Illinois Vietnamese Association. They brought their deep background and experience in the community to the table. As they were talking about crossing cultural boundaries I was reminded of a time many years ago now. I’m sure my daughter won’t mind me telling this story. (Hahaha, she’ll totally mind.) We told her if she met a certain goal for summer reading we’d reward her with a visit to a special restaurant. As one might guess, she totally blew away that goal plus. We took her to Macarth...

Uptown, A Walk Through I am the tarnished penny abandoned on the sidewalk the lone glove left on the fence post the key-shaped pacifier gathering grit on the park path I am that plastic bag floating, caught in the shrubs the empty Starbucks cup blown into the curb the scratch-off littering the pavement in front of the 7/11 the limp condom by the loading docks behind Ace Hardware I am the footprint in the snow between The House of Prayer and the House of Hair.

Does anyone remember The Cross and the Switchblade by David Wilkerson a young, zealous pastor who ventured into the inner-city to confront and evangelize New York City gangs? Pat Boone starred in the film adaptation. The book and movie were highly dramatized to heighten the tension(s). That was 50 years ago. Fast forward. Uptown. Chicago. 2017. A couple times a week we have a shooting at the corner of Sheridan and Wilson, between Uptown Baptist Church and McDonalds. I’m always hyper aware as I approach that intersection to be on the lookout. 1) Is there a bunch of people hanging? 2) Are there any cars driving by real slow with their window down? 3) If there’s been a shooting recently at one end of the street there’s usually payback at the other end. This is a lot of to keep in mind while out doing errands. I’ve heard different explanations of why this corner is so deadly. One is, of course, drugs. It is disputed territory. Two rival gangs claim it as theirs for vending. T...

Another Brooklyn , Jacqueline Woods A couple of weeks ago I went to hear Jacqueline Woods read from Brown Girl Dreaming and Another Brooklyn at Women & ChildrenFirst Bookstore . What a refreshing evening—saw some old friends from AROHO. Brown Girl Dreaming is straight up memoir. It won National Book Award for Young People's Literature in non-fiction. Another Brooklyn is another story. A lot of good fiction reads like autobiography. And, certainly, there is little division between the two. Our lives inform our stories, and visa versa. Yet, any reader of Brown Girl Dreaming will see resounding strains in Another Brooklyn . Certainly Woodson’s love for her adopted hometown. Also something else—nostalgia. Many of us look back with different glasses on our past, but in NYC and Brooklyn the neighborhoods are dramatically changing. Readers of this blog will know from my posts that I’m no fan of gentrification. Yet there is no stopping these population shifts. ...

http://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/theater/news/ct-pivot-arts-site-specific-memory-tour-20160816-story.html Not sure what this is, here’s the article: by Morgan Greene Chicago Tribune Pivot Arts will produce a site-specific interactive production titled "The Memory Tour," the North Side company announced Tuesday. Structured as a 90-minute indoor and outdoor walking tour through other people's memories in the Edgewater and Uptown neighborhoods, the event incorporates live performances with an interactive app and filmed interviews. Isaac Gomez, Brett Neveu and Tanya Palmer have contributed written works for the project. Directed by Julieanne Ehre and co-conceived by Palmer and Ehre, "The Memory Tour" will feature Ann James, Sharon Lanza, Ashlyn Lozano, Brandon Rivera, Kate Smith and Alejandro Tey. The production runs Sept. 10-Oct. 9, beginning at 5252 N. Broadway Ave. Sharon Lanza is a Memory Docent in Pivot Arts’ "T...

So in about 2 days I leave with my boxed bicycle on an international flight to England, once there I will cycle the length of the island, from top o’Scotland (John of Groates) to Land’s End. JOGLE. Now for the scary part. The last couple weeks leading up to this have been hectic and stressful. I’m not writing for sympathy (I’m probably also suffering from survivor guilt) or to say my circumstances are worse than others. I’m just saying that I really, really need this ride. In January I sat down with myself and did a quick evaluation. What made me happy? Truly happy. Where was my sweet spot? And I wrote down: bicycling. For so many people when they hear what I’m about to embark upon, they laugh and say, that’s not a vacation. The past 12 months have been rough: viz a viz relationships and writing (at the same time my critique group that I relied upon for feedback fell apart). I’ve needed to find the things that bring me back to a center, to a bit of hope. It’s ...

At this blog (Memoirous--about memories) I’ve mentioned in the past certain blogs or websites that can help to spark flashes. Right now I’m onto Forgotten Chicago and Abandoned Spaces. I signed up for notifications so whenever there is a new post it shows up in my feed. Which is all Facebook gobbely-gook. What I mean to say is I love the pictures and they motivate me to flash and write about memories. Abandoned Spaces viscerally calls up nostalgic curiosity. I am always intrigued by the various spaces, once inhabited but now abandoned and the various relics left behind.  Abandoned Spaces The abandoned Helmsley Castle, Yorkshire, England Sometimes it is a shoe store still warehousing and displaying styles from the 60s, sometimes it is a schoolroom from Chernobyl with decaying textbooks fertilizing a tree growing up between broken desks. Who isn’t fascinated by ruins? They call to us, remind us that we are all mortal, that nothing stays the same, but will eventua...

My neighbor down the street is a hooker. She even has business cards she hands out. Happy Hooker. She crochets beanies and caps. My neighbor down the street is homeless. She sleeps in a tent under the viaduct and people drive by and leave food for her on the sidewalk. Late at night creeps honk as they speed by, the loud horn echoing off the peeling cement walls. She rarely gets a good night’s rest. Yet every day she is up and knitting, sitting in the coffee shop or else in a lawn chair in the park, waiting for customers. She customizes her orders—though she reserves the right to refuse service. Let me know if you’d like Linda to make you something. http://oddlovescompany.com/about/     photo by Stacy Rupolo, http://chicagoreporter.com/a-community-out-in-the-cold/

I wrote a couple days ago about the Book Box/Shake, Rattle, and Read and how they got me through the hard times here in Uptown. Today I’m going to write about “the one that got away.” We all have stories like these. For example once my husband and I were traveling and stopped in Wooster, Ohio at a used bookstore where he came upon a signed book by G. K. Chesteron. But who had $100 when we were intentionally avoiding the toll road because of the tolls! Still, he brings it up sometimes like an old war wound that has never healed. It galls him, the one that got away. My story is similar. After moving to Chicago in 1982 I was living and volunteering among the poor. Definitely funds were scarce, but I always enjoyed browsing the bookstore. It was in fact my lifeline. One afternoon I was in there and stumbled upon a title about the Arctic. I’ve always loved stories about the North and South Pole. Usually they involve eating dogs on some barren wind-swept ice plateau or figh...

    I’ve lived in Uptown in Chicago for 34 years—and that whole time there has been a little used bookstore down the street at Lawrence and Broadway. First it was the Book Box and then it changed its name to Shake, Rattle, and Read. Along with books there was a wide assortment of used vinyl. The current owner Ric Addy will never know what a godsend his shop has been to me through the years. Readers of this blog will have already picked up that books have saved my life. Reading has been my constant companion even before I could read. As a pre-reader I begged for the same books to be read to me over and over. I connected with story. As miserable as the Uptown neighborhood appeared to me in the early 80s it was only bearable because of the Book Box. I’d go there with empty pockets, just to browse. That’s all I could afford. Still it was enough to stand there in that environment and breathe in words, musty yellowed pages of them, pulp fiction covers, ...

Evolution/Uptown 1980s: The guy walking down the street talking to himself 2000s: The guy walking down the street talking into his cell phone 2010s The guy walking down the street pretending to talk on his cell

Uptown I sleep between the boats in the harbor and the shshsh rattling of the elevated trains rocking back and forth floating, on one side the eternal hum of traffic on Lake Shore Drive and the construction horn, bleating as if through thick fog a new platform going up at Wilson and Broadway. To the south, on the strains of a strong wind—cheers from Wrigley Field, and if evening, the lights halos of hope, always hope. To the north the coast curves and if possible, if the sky is clear and the air washed clean, the observatory at Northwestern. And, in between, the pink Edgewater, successor to the famous hotel demolished—who knows why? Between landfill that extended the shore that lengthened the Drive, between train tracks abandoned, fused, split and merged, constantly changing but ever the same the sounds and movements of Uptown, by the lake.

Thursday night we walked up to Wrigley—not for a game but for the Billy Joel concert. Okay, not exactly the concert but for the atmosphere outside the stadium. We’re used to slumming it for dates. Case in point: we showed up with lawn chairs and set up outside to listen in. We did the exact same thing September 8, 2012 when we were celebrating our wedding anniversary. My husband and I were sitting outside Wrigley Field waiting for Bruce Springsteen to take the stage. And then this happened: “Isn’t that the guy who tried to pee in our closet?”

Last week I received a distressing e-mail. 5 Dead Birds at the corner of Wilson and Sheridan. There they were on the sidewalk, bloodied and battered. Since the e-mail had gone out to several people there was a thread starting, assumptions on what caused the casualties. There is a 10-story building there, perhaps they ran into the building or the building’s windows. Perhaps the street lights confused them. It had been a windy weekend, so maybe wind patterns had something to do with the melee. While a friend was down at the corner checking the scene out another bird fell down, almost hitting him. The photos are shocking. So many deaths have taken place at that same corner. Two years ago 5 people were shot there. All black males in their early 20s, late teens. They were sitting on the steps of the uptown Baptist Church when a car driving by opened up on them. One was shot fatally in the head. The birds were identified as yellow-billed cuckoos, though at times w...

What I Saw on my Walk Last Night I stepped outside and saw someone in front of the halfway house jiggy dancing and down the street a league of African nations play soccer on an empty lot, with overturned trashcans and PCV tubing for makeshift goals. After passing them, even from a block away I can still hear them cheer and roar, Score! I walk past Margate Field House where a man wearing a bra on the outside of his shirt sits with his shopping cart. He also sports a fabulous hat, we nod at each other. Next I meet a father walking with his son on a bicycle. He rides a bit crooked, tipping back and forth between the training wheels. Then there is a family of women, a grandma, mom and a smattering of children. Grandma wears a white linen veil and a sari of white. If I were to guess I’d day they were from Eritrea. St. Thomas of Canterbury Catholic Church hosts Eritrean Coptic services. The old woman stops and speaks to me, what looks to be a burnt match clutched between...