Memoirous

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...

Readers of this blog know that I often post about memories. I've blended the art of flash with memoir to come up with flash memoir. Memoir, unless you've had a ridiculously exciting life--such as people who survive a bridge collaps e--most of us lead lives of quiet desperation--even Thoreau's life was made up of unmemorable experiences. The ordinary, the mundane. And what can be more ubiquitous or mundane than a pigeon. Here in the city we call them flying rats. There's nothing special about them--mainly because they're EVERYWHERE. A pigeon exemplifies the very idea of writing about the ordinary. Consider, then, submitting flash to  http://everypigeon.com/ Every Pigeon  publishes works which magnify the mundane. Works that find significance in everyday routine, light and layered color in the grey coat of every pigeon. We publish twice a year in June and December. We favor work that puts its face right up to the glass. Let us see the details o...