Tag: alcoholism
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Memoir: A lineage of male violence (1976-77)
I wake profoundly shaken by this dream, cast down by its revelation, stumbling into the sudden nightmare of day dawning, and I, a virtual parricide.
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Memoir: My father the war veteran (1970)
Sarah and I exchange a nervous smile. This is so strange! Where is this going?
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Memoir: Ofrenda para mis padres
On the bottom tier are candles: one at true north, whence comes the cold, one to the south, whence nourishing warmth, one to the east, where the sun rises, and a final to the west, where each day’s light goes to die. The candles orient souls on their long voyage back from the spiritual realm,…
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Memoir: Encountering NASCAR (1972)
One day when I was 11, dad asked me, “How would you like to fly to Alabama to see the Talladega 500?” He may as well have asked if I wanted to dance the tarantella on Venus. The question made no sense. I craved dad’s company so much that I readily agreed. Dad ran an…
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Memoir: an incomplete healing (1974)
Dorothy Thompson, the “First Lady of American Journalism,” wrote that “peace is not the absence of conflict, but the presence of creative alternatives for responding to conflict–alternatives to…violence.” In other words, at war’s end, enmity between factions is never eliminated, but instead transformed into “peaceful” guises. In my experience, just as conflict persists after an…
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Memoir: the weaving of a dream 1976
It’s a Friday night in March, and Phil, Glen, Billy and I, all sophisticated 8th graders, quietly climb a ladder into the cramped space under the rafters in Billy’s garage. We bring with us a 12 pack of beer and a transistor radio. The little attic is dark and smells of roof tar and sawdust.…
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Memoir: Beginnings and first recollections 1961-65
I am born at 10:10 pm on May 7th in a room at West Suburban Hospital, in Oak Park, Illinois. My parents are Ernest Bruce Bendelow, 30, and his wife, Patricia, 29. They currently reside on Second Avenue in the near-by Cook County suburb Maywood, but Bruce will soon complete purchase of a three-story, four-square…
The Wikiness 