Tag: oak park
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Memoir: Joking can be serious (1974)
Why do humans laugh? Why do they make jokes? Ask the evolutionary psychologists, and they’ll tell you that people only speak and behave to further the survival of our species. Two scientists at S.U.N.Y Binghamton assert that laughter first began among our ancestors two to four million years ago as a sort of social glue.…
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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: my sister Sheila
My sister Sheila had a magical connection with the family Cairn Terrier. Sheila would bang out Grieg’s “In the Hall of the Mountain King” on the baby grand as Marilyn, the dog, sat on her haunches underneath and howled, much to my delight. It seemed Sheila and Marilyn communicated on an intense separate wavelength, unheard…
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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: the education of a toxic male, 1966-72
I met Kevin when my family moved into the south Oak Park home across the alley from his family, I was five, and he a year younger, and over the next six years or so we were constant playmates outside of school. A clever kid, Kevin was a natural athlete, who spurred my growth as…
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Memoir: Clean-up man
My father was raised by a Scottish task-mistress who made him clean the house before he could have fun, and he passed along this mandate to me and my sisters: first you clean, then play. As a boy, I learned to sanitize toilets, scrub tubs, mop floors, wash dishes, and unlike most people, I loved…
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Memoir: moments of freedom, part 1
For this post, “freedom” is the sense of agency one gets when freed from external constraints on one’s choices. This freedom from allows one the freedom to–to choose one’s course in a universe where “free will” is ultimately an illusion. Feeling free never lasts. It’s there for a moment that passes as soon as you…
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Memoir 1973: stepping into adult responsibilities and the counter-culture
In what will be one of the most formative experiences of my young life, the summer after 6th grade, our across-the-alley neighbor Debbie and her family go on vacation to Europe and take my sister Sharon with them. Unexpectedly, they have chosen me to dog sit for their dim but affectionate beagle, Tara. Yes, the…
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Memoir 1965-70: a “down-sizing” with powerful repercussions; my eldest sisters; figuring out my identities and class
According to my sisters, my mother in 1965 feels exhausted keeping five children in the house at 435 N. Elmwood Ave. She is depressed and already an addict, but persuades my father to seek a simpler house in which to manage her energetic brood of five Bendelow children. They select this modest four-bedroom place at…
The Wikiness 