Category: memoir
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Memoir: “And then everything changed” (1988-89)
We’d missed the window for a pain-blocker, so the monitors foretold waves of excruciation that would seismically rip through your torso.
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Memoir: Rest in peace, Brenda. You never gave yourself away (1978)
Those lyrics described the way you lived your life–with bold individuality, yet also compassion–revolutionary subversion alongside radical acceptance.
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Memoir: belief-based action (1986)
Belief is a powerful thing. It brings into being all manner of people and institutions. It asserts that certain things are, even when evidence for them is inconclusive. It’s another word for “conjecture.” But what a fruitful conjecture! When theories gain a critical mass of support, empires are built, paradigms shift, and people’s lives get…
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Memoir: Musical Madeleines (1970-73) (1983-85)
“… in that time Taupin’s protagonists grew dark with a growing awareness of corruption and human depravity–strong stuff for 12-year-old me.”
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Memoir: a path not taken (1979)
There are moments in which we decide with huge consequence. One such decision was when I declared that I would no longer be a “Pre-Law” major in my freshman year at college. Why had I thought “Pre-Law” a good choice? In my Junior year of high school, my mother and I decided that a legal…
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Memoir: back to school again, but different (2024)
It’s “back to school time,” late September, and I feel nostalgia for all those autumns I bravely buckled up, put on the uniform, bid farewell to summer leisure reading and reconciled myself to another year of Education-ese. All teachers understood the calendar: in August or September, get your s-word together. You’re working for the school…
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Memoir: Big surprise (2022-23)
In the fall of 2022, about a year after I retired, I decided to disrupt my relationship with alcohol. Drinking had become automatic and was no longer working for me. My doctor threatened blood pressure meds if I couldn’t lower my hypertension, and cholesterol pills if I couldn’t improve my blood quality. So I decided…
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Memoir: unsung hero Sharon (1971-72)
In 1971 and 72, when mom is bodily present between stints in psych wards, she disappears for days in deep chemical fogs inside her bedroom, inaccessible to us kids. Into the motherless void steps fifteen-year-old Sharon, who becomes a loving presence for her younger siblings, Sheila, Sarah, and me. It is Sharon who in mom’s…
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Memoir: something that went bump in my night, or my first time with the Violent Femmes (1983)
Finks is a second-floor music club on Normal’s Front Street, where they have Augsberger (Light and Dark) on tap. I am 22, a grad student at ISU, and the unappointed taste maker and music critic of my Central Illinois metropolis. I am qualified, having read books by Griel Marcus, listened to old blues recordings, subscribed…
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Memoir: Mother (1961-71)
Oblivious to the presence of my sisters, my mother sighs wistfully to me. She recounts how, with each of her previous three pregnancies, her goal of a male baby had been cruelly deferred. But as a Christian woman, she kept faithfully praying and then–this blessed night at West Suburban Hospital when the nurse handed her…
The Wikiness 