Tag Archives: Personal Narratives

Apr 27 2014
Posts

Lost & Found

Finding Vivian Maier

Yesterday I saw the film, Finding Vivian Maier. It is the previously untold story of a street and portrait photographer. Ms. Maier’s portraits were not staged or styled. Her subjects were often captured surreptitiously as she marched out into to the streets of Chicago with the children in her care. Vivian was a nanny to some of Chicago’s upper middle-class and wealthy families who lived along the North Shore of Lake Michigan. She left her job as a seamstress in New York to become a nanny so she could find ways to be outdoors, to be out in the world yet still hide in plain sight. Vivian was an undercover artist. Continue reading →

Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Apr 20 2014
1 Comment
Posts

Journal/Journey

“What matters in life is not what happens to you but what you remember and how you remember it.” ― Gabriel García Márquez

Years before I started writing for others, I wrote poetry and journaled for myself. Sometimes I would share a poem with the person who inspired it yet seldom a journal entry. Journaling by its very nature is a private act, a conversation with oneself, often a daily record of happenings, experiences and observations. Sometimes our loved ones or curious friends or colleagues surreptitiously read our journals. Much is written about the consequences of reading someone’s journal without the author’s permission.

Continue reading →

Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Mar 23 2014
3 Comments
Posts

The Comfort of Sourdough Pancakes

How friends, family and food feed the spirit.

Life has a way of unfolding in waves. Some days the lake is calm, other days, treacherous. What’s required is an ability to navigate confidently and to be even-keeled when called upon. Sometimes we require a crew, shipmates who can prevent us from capsizing. Continue reading →

Tagged , , , , , , , , , , ,
Mar 16 2014
Posts

The Vibrator Story

People and families have a personal narrative history and so do places. My birthplace, my hometown, Racine, Wisconsin has one. It is the story of a factory town which attracted European immigrants, beginning with French explorers in 1699 who established trading posts at the mouth of the Root River where it empties into Lake Michigan.

Continue reading →

Tagged , , , , , ,
Feb 16 2014
1 Comment
Posts

Musings on a Year of Writing

“I’ve learned that by the practice of writing with intention, discipline, and passion, I became a writer.”

This past week marks a year, the anniversary, the birthday of this blog. I’ve been writing as an avocation for over 35 years, beginning with poetry, followed by recovery journals, stand-up comedy and monologue scripts, memoir writing, and finally as an activist-essayist.  Since starting this blog and maintaining a practice of writing at least weekly, I’ve become the thing I’ve been doing. I’m a writer. Continue reading →

Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Feb 01 2014
2 Comments
Posts

Shameless Self-Promotion

This morning I filled out a www.buzzfeed.com survey, “What Career Should You Actually Have?” I was pleased with the answer, Writer. I also took the survey, “What Kind of Dog Are You? and discovered I’m a Great Dane, and lastly, according to buzzfeed.com, I should live in Portland, Oregon. Overall, it’s pretty accurate, I write, I’m a big gal (though short in stature compared to a Great Dane) and my personality commands attention when I enter a room. Lastly, I live in Madison, Wisconsin which shares many similarities to Portland.

Continue reading →

Tagged , , , , , , , ,
Jan 19 2014
1 Comment
Posts

Beach Boys, Beatles, Bob Dylan & the Byrds

Growing Up in the Early 1960s

“Ah, but I was so much older then I’m younger than that now”   Lyrics from My Back Pages by Bob Dylan

A number of recent events and anniversaries coalesced this month, prompting me to reminisce. My birthday is in January and like the month’s namesake Janus, the god of beginnings and transitions, I’ve been looking back at mine. Fifty years ago, as a baby boomer growing up in the early 1960’s, my life was about to change in ways I couldn’t imagine. Continue reading →

Tagged , , , , , , , , , ,
Dec 27 2013
1 Comment
Posts

A Filmgoer’s Guide to the Best Films of 2013

“I think cinema, movies, and magic have always been closely associated. The very earliest people who made film were magicians.” Francis Ford Coppola

“Now more than ever we need to talk to each other, to listen to each other and understand how we see the world, and cinema is the best medium for doing this.” Martin Scorsese

First, I’m a cinephile not a film critic. Yet, like a critic, I’m able to talk about films pretty intelligently; I see a lot of movies, I often write about them, make recommendations to friends and family and followers of my blog. I’m informed and I’ve studied the art of film-making, not from behind the camera or in the classroom, but in the audience where I believe it counts the most. Continue reading →

Tagged , , , , , ,
Dec 07 2013
3 Comments
Posts

A Gender Journey in Three Vignettes

Preface

This week when beginning to write a piece for my LGBTQ Narratives Activist-Writers group, I was in a fog. The prompt was a broad subject, gender, and in fact I had suggested it. It is a topic that interests me. It’s a dynamic subject, it affects perception, language, challenges assumptions, and forces us to adapt to our changing culture, roles and identities. Continue reading →

Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Sep 08 2013
1 Comment
Posts

Stories We Tell/Stories Untold

Ever since I was a child, films, like good books, served as windows to worlds sometimes unfamiliar or far away due to distance in time or space. Movies depicted characters both fictional and historic, unraveled mysteries or documented adventures; they always engaged my emotions and attention. Some films are more familiar and familial, memoirs or morality tales that act like mirrors to my lived experience, or road maps of my internal journey. I prefer non-fiction to fiction. Most fiction, in my view, is simply reality in disguise, employed to protect the innocent and the guilty. As a memoirist I am most interested in the stories we tell and the stories untold about our lives.

Continue reading →

Tagged , , , , , , , , , ,
Newer posts →