Sunday, February 4, 2018
Pat’s Hats & Clutter
A few weeks ago I made up my mind I’d had it with the hats. Out of yarn, except for a few half-inch balls of leftover bits, I vowed to stay away from Walmart’s yarn shelves and Michael’s craft store. Then Edie at The Center brought four shopping bags full of bright skeins of all colors and textures...
Sign in to see full entry.
Saturday, February 3, 2018
DEADLINES
One of the facets of The Center’s Write Your Own Story program has been that there’s no deadline, no arbitrary word limit, as happens in news reporting. Have you seen the new program on Friday evenings on Channel 9 PBS, “800 Words?” It’s about a writer who relocates to a new place and begins writing...
Sign in to see full entry.
Friday, February 2, 2018
LOIS LANE? NOT EXACTLY.
In the early 1980s I was a J-student at SIUe and worked for a year in ’80-81 as a beat reporter for the Journal newspaper chain out of their Bethalto office. My beat was local government. I attended city council and school board meetings, the board meetings of the township hospital. I took notes,...
Sign in to see full entry.
Thursday, February 1, 2018
WASTE NOT, WANT NOT: A PHILOSOPHY
From long before the great depression that followed the stock market crash of 1929, when 90% of us lived in rural areas or on farms, it was considered a sin to waste anything. If you look at photos of folks in those days, they’re skinny and dressed in shabby that wasn’t so chic. We ate what was put...
Sign in to see full entry.
Wednesday, January 31, 2018
OLD QUESTION
It was the era of bra-burning and street protests, the time when the Equal Rights Amendment was on the nightly news, and only one more state (Illinois) was needed for ratification. The word of the day was women’s liberation. Guys had to tread lightly. Many women were acting out in fierce and hostile...
Sign in to see full entry.
Tuesday, January 30, 2018
SWIMMING LESSON: THE STENO POOL
I was 18 when I moved up from the mail room to the steno pool at Pacific Telephone & Telegraph Co., in Seattle. The building on Terry Avenue in the downtown area – a couple decades before the space needle was built for the 1962 World’s Fair – was several blocks up the hill and a few blocks north of...
Sign in to see full entry.
Monday, January 29, 2018
ON TARGET
After breakfast with my boys I headed to Target for a few necessities: multi-vitamins, cold tabs, dishwasher detergent pods, and Cheerios. I meandered the aisles of the store, which is under renovation at the moment, searched the men’s and women’s departments for thermal knit underwear – to no...
Sign in to see full entry.
Sunday, January 28, 2018
THE PERM
Went to Beauty Brands – “the” place to go for a coiffure. I told Mandy I didn’t want a super curly poem, that I hate the Brillo pad look, but I was tired of the long straight stringy look. Long story short, two hours after I walked in, I walked out with - you guessed it – the next best thing to...
Sign in to see full entry.
Saturday, January 27, 2018
BABY STUFF
There’s a story on my news feed about a mother who came home from work to find her baby girl’s head had been shaved by her mother-in-law, without so much as a by-your-leave. Brought back a 60-year-old memory that’s still a bit of a sore point. It seems my mother-in-law thought my 15-month old baby...
Sign in to see full entry.
Friday, January 26, 2018
HILLBILLY ELEGY
The Center: 1-25-18 -- Write Your Own Story session. Ibbie was back after a bout with the flu and wrote another wise and funny bit about camping trips and swimming in the river, about a joke she made that backfired. At nine she was prone to carsickness, especially on those winding roads in the...
Sign in to see full entry.
