PRACTICE - Birth Order - 15min

Yes, I’m a firstborn. With all the flaws, rights, privileges, and responsibilities that go with being a firstborn. “With great power comes great responsibility.” Hmmm. JFK? No, it was Peter Benjamin Parker. Spider-Man.
Maybe it should read, “With great responsibility comes great power.” Either way, there is an ethical piece, a balance between burden and privilege.
Firstborns [...]

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PRACTICE: Hair - 15min

I have brown curly hair. I am the only one in my family with curls. Not just waves, but corkscrew curls. People asked throughout my childhood: Who has curls in the family? The answer to strangers was: Her grandmother had wavy hair. To friends and one another, we joked: Her father was Zorro.
Zorro is what [...]

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PRACTICE: Martin Luther King - 15min

I don’t remember Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., not like Jim remembers. Jim was in 4th grade when Martin Luther King was assassinated. He says he remembers Walter Cronkite cackling over a black-and-white TV tube. I can picture the television, set in a blond wood console with long spindly legs. I can picture Jim’s dad [...]

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PRACTICE - Martin Luther King - 15min

I don’t remember Martin Luther King in 1962 or ‘63 when I was 8 or 9 or 10. I don’t remember him when I lived in the South. I must have been sheltered from all the strife and unrest that was going on during those years. I would not have understood.
I do remember him in [...]

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WRITING TOPIC - MARTIN LUTHER KING

Planting The Seed, Lightpainting Series, stained glass window, Minneapolis, Minnesota, August 2007, photo © 2007 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.

When I walked out into the sub-zero temperatures yesterday to warm up my car, a piece by NPR’s Enrique Rivera poured out of the Alpine radio speakers. Rubbing my hands together, and pulling the end of [...]

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PRACTICE - Circles - 15min

Circles, I’m popping circles into my mouth. I’m addicted to Trader Joe’s bucket of miniature chocolate chip cookies. I couldn’t figure out why they tasted so good. It was Liz who piped up, “Oh, it’s the butter…” when she read the label after dinner.
Circles in cubes, the rubber bottom of a stainless steel coffee cup, [...]

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PRACTICE - Mahogany (or Goldenrod?) - 20min

I had a hard time choosing one color, the way I have a hard time choosing anything. When I looked over the list of Crayola colors, I realized I must have had a 64 box of crayons because it would have been impossible in my age range to grow up with a box with 80 [...]

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W. H. Murray - Providence Moves Too

I write often about the movement of Providence. She is tied to Goethe’s dreams, but she is not Goethe. Each time I write of Providence, I can’t remember the quote that stands behind my words. They are the words of Scottish expeditionist,  W. H. Murray.

So I don’t forget:

But when I said that nothing had been [...]

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3043 - What’s Left Behind

3043 - What’s Left Behind, inside what used to be Orr Books, Hennepin Avenue, Uptown, Minneapolis, Minnesota, photo © 2007 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.

While walking to dinner in Uptown a few weeks ago, I snapped a few photos of the shadowy insides of 3043 Hennepin Avenue, last location of the (almost) 40-year-old Orr Books.
The [...]

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The 1960’s — What Was America Reading?

 
BookMark, Minneapolis Central Library, downtown Minneapolis, through the rain, August 2007, opened May 2006, architecture by the design team of Cesar Pelli & Associates, photo © 2007 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved. 
 
Time for another decade of bestselling books. At the end of the 1960’s, gas was 39¢ a gallon, a 1962 Jaguar XKE would set [...]

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Bench Press Your Mind - What Are You Reading This Summer?

Lately, I’ve been feeling the changes that come with age. The bones are a little creakier, the eyes need more light and time to focus, and I don’t have the zip and vigor I did when I was 20.
When I was travelling the last few weeks, I could feel the effects on my mind. I [...]

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Cassie’s Porch - Then & Now

-Great, Great, Grandfather & Grandmother on Cassie’s Porch 1876, copy shot June 5th, 2007, Augusta, Georgia, photo © 2007 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.

-Cassie’s House 1876, copy shot June 5, 2007, Augusta, Georgia, photo © 2007 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.

We spent the day driving around Augusta, looking for landmarks, visiting cemeteries and churches. The [...]

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WRITING TOPIC - WATER WINGS

Island of Pine and Clay, Clarks Hill Dam, June 3, 2007, photo © 2007 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.

Have you ever made love under a rustic waterfall or on the sand at Cannon Beach, Oregon (it doesn’t feel as romantic as it looks in the movies). Have you soaked in a natural hot springs in [...]

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Excavating Memories

 -Magnolia, June 3rd, 2007, Augusta, Georgia, all photos © 2007 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.

The magnolias are blooming in Georgia. And the mimosas, wisteria, Spanish moss. I don’t have to dig all that deep. Everything falls into place the minute I ask. My body is tired; I am holding all this in my brain. The [...]

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Duck & Cover

              -Duck & Cover, posted on YouTube by maesterjay, May 16th, 2006

In a quest for memoir details and memories, I spent the afternoon driving through Southern childhood neighborhoods with my mother and step-father. When we had finished walking through tall blooming magnolias in Georgia’s historic Magnolia Cemetery, we drove by my grandfather’s ranch home from the [...]

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Arriving Baltimore From Seat 26F

-Puzzle Pieces, May 29th, 2007, photo © 2007 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.

Arrived safely into Baltimore after an hour delay in the flight. I had the very last window seat on the left side of a plane filled with chatty middle school kids, a toddler, and a screaming baby one aisle over. I’m not complaining. [...]

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PRACTICE - What I Loved & Hated About Sharpening Dental Tools - 15min

What I loved about sharpening dental tools was the pay. What I hated about sharpening dental tools was the pay. The jobs that paid well in a sleepy Western town weren’t necessarily jobs that you could sink a growing brain into. I loved the precision of it. There were certain tools that I was good [...]

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Dental Tools & Diesel Trucks

-micrometer, image public domain

Jobs I’ve had over my entire life, in no particular order? It was hard to remember them all. And it seemed like there were so many more.
Isn’t it strange that we spend most of our lives working jobs in which we wonder what we’re doing there? I’ve always been envious of those [...]

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Dreams Of A Creative Insomniac

 -Can’t Sleep, April 7th, 2007, all photos © 2007 by QuoinMonkey, all rights reserved

I stayed up writing until 4am last night. I recognize the state of mind as one of my creative zones. It’s also a lonesome place where I live in the heart of darkness and pulpy gray brain matter. Thoughts, feeling, and ruminations move [...]

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Paper Or Plastic?

-Ancient Text, on the Mesa, Taos, New Mexico, January 2003, Kodak C-41 negative print by QuoinMonkey, © 2003, all rights reserved

I used to shoot one photo at a time with a solid, black bodied, manual Minolta: 5 lenses, 9 filters, and a viewfinder. The metal body was covered in hard, black cardboard that would later [...]

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Through A Hole In The Sky

-Through a Hole in the Sky, Mabel Dodge Luhan House, Taos, New Mexico, February 2007, photo by QuoinMonkey, © 2007, all rights reserved

Saturday, May 12th, 2007

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Books With A Bang

It’s hard to come up with only 10 books that have had the most impact on my life. I’ve lived long enough to know there are many more than 10. But once I sat down to write, and began crawling through the recesses of childhood memory, a solid list began to form.
It reads to me [...]

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Julio Iglesias Does Books

We weren’t readers in my family. Well, except Dad. He read books like In Cold Blood and Hawaii (which, at 937 pages, was too big for me to ever want to take on). Mom read The National Enquirer.
Why, then, is it so hard to come up with my list of all the books I’ve loved before…who [...]

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Proof There Is Yin and Yang

A post over at Fluent made me realize there are at least two sides to every thing. The post mentioned a persistent bout of acne (among other ailments), which got me thinking about my own constant struggle with oily skin. Which then got me thinking about my parents who at the age of 80 and 83 both still [...]

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PRACTICE - I Don’t Remember - 10min

I don’t remember the name of the paint color I picked for most the house. It’s a creamy white and I love the way it contrasts against the dark wood beams. I don’t remember what kind of wood it is. I think it’s teak, stained dark, but even if someone told me I probably would [...]

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PRACTICE - I Don’t Remember - 10min

I don’t remember the last time I felt this scattered. I don’t remember what time I went to bed last night. I don’t remember the color of the frosting on the last birthday cake someone presented to me. I think it was an ice cream cake. No, that was the one I gave Liz for [...]

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Eulogy to Memoir

memoir

1567, from Anglo-Fr. memorie “note, memorandum, something written to be kept in mind” (1427), from L. memoria (see memory). Meaning “person’s written account of his life” is from 1673. The pl. form memoirs “personal record of events,” first recorded 1659. 
                                             - from the Online Etymology Dictionary
 ______________________

I’ve been thinking about memoir, the word, the difficulty people [...]

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