29 04, 14
It used to be a happy memory.
Read more...28 05, 13
What a bomb my brother dropped! Just when you think you’ve heard everything...
Read more...Tags: adultery
08 10, 12
Oh, the blessed web! All those once-unanswerable questions that now can be: What would’ve happened if? How badly did I blow it? Thanks to the web, we can now find out.
Read more...Tags: Jefferson Airplane, Fillmore East, 1969, LSD
05 09, 12
Is love random? A beautiful stranger glimpsed across a crowded room, two ships passing in the night? Instead of a bow and arrow, does Cupid shoot a sawed-off six-gauge missing its sight?
Read more...Tags: Umm Kulthum, Ahmed Ramy, Egyptian culture, Virginia Danielson, Selim Nassib
15 07, 12
That actions have consequences is a central theme of Riding the Cyclone, but for many years, in my self-absorbed obliviousness, I had no idea what great oak had grown up right beside me.
Read more...Tags: Medea Benjamin, Global Exchange, Beatles, Ed Sullivan Show, postwar tourism
04 06, 12
On Feb 11, 1968, in the midst of his presidential campaign, Robert F. Kennedy came to Putney School, where his daughter was a junior, to speak at our Sunday night meeting.
Read more...Tags: Robert F. Kennedy, assassination, complicated grief, 1968
14 05, 12
If I could have any wish, I’d wish for someone to appear out of the blue, offering me a sheaf of old papers of my mother’s. Coincidentally, I’ve been able to do just that for two strangers.
Read more...Tags: old letters, old journals, family memories
10 04, 12
If, as Mother’s Day approaches, you’re one of the people
not buying a card—well, this one’s for you:
Read more...Tags: mother's day, maternal care, maternal death
21 03, 12
I wrote this memoir in the spirit of a Holocaust survivor: after enduring such an ordeal, the need to bear witness is strong. This happened; the world must know.
It’s not as if
I were going to learn anything from writing this book. No, surely after years of therapy, I’ve gleaned all possible lessons. It’s the world that needs educating, not me.
Or so I thought. But then, why was it so hard to write certain stories so that they made sense?
Read more...Tags: LSD, Manhattan, 1971, retroactive shame, new understanding of old memories
21 02, 12
I don’t remember her, not at all. But boy, does she get screen time!
Read more...Tags: 1958, winter vacation, Miami, Florida vacation, segregation, adultery, colored maid, music
01 02, 12
“I’d like to write my memoirs, too,” an old friend told me. “Trouble is, I don’t remember anything!”
Read more...Tags: writing process, memoir-writing
04 01, 12
What
is a memory, anyway? Is it like a photo or a video clip? When you remember the day your dad took you to the amusement park and you rode on the toy train, what’s going on inside your head?
Read more...Tags: memory, nunley's carousel, memory alteration
07 12, 11
The ending was so sad, I couldn’t bear it, so I’d start reading all over again at the beginning: so went the story I told myself for years—and anyone else who listened. Trouble is, the book has a
happy ending.
Read more...Tags: Herbert the Lion, Clare Turlay Newberry, memory alteration
18 11, 11
Before I wrote this book, I’d had rafts of therapy, hours and hours—some of it actually helpful. And I figured that the past was pretty much dealt with. I conceived of writing this book as a matter of getting it all down, in order (more or less), and then pruning the irrelevant bits.
Boy, was I wrong.
Read more...Tags: criminal evidence, old diary