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Two Sides to the Same Story? At Least. Here’s My Sister’s Version

February 12, 2012 By marion 5 Comments

LAST WEEK I TOLD You my side of the story. This week, it’s my sister’s turn. It’s what I call the “She Said, She Said” of all sisters. If you have a sister, you know. If not, believe me when I tell you that no two sisters see any family event the same way. Why not? Well, it’s not that we’re different in spite of being raised in the same household. We’re different because we were raised in the same household. What does that look like? Read on. [Read more...]

Two Sides to the Same Story? At Least. What to Do? Write Your Version.

February 5, 2012 By marion 8 Comments

A YOUNG WOMAN is breezing through the kitchen on the way to the refrigerator. Wearing tennis shorts, a T-shirt, her long red hair in a ponytail, she’s bare-foot, 22 years old, and the phone rings. I can do this with this scene—make it third-person—the way we can at any of those moments just before life takes a tilt; that old where were you when thing. [Read more...]

Ah, the Luck of the Redhead

January 1, 2012 By marion 1 Comment

WHO WILL CROSS your path first on New Year’s Day? If it is a redhead, you may need to fasten your seat belt for a bumpy 2012, since at least one beginning-of-the-year tradition holds that the person first crossing your threshold in the new year decides the luck you’ll have for the next 365 days. [Read more...]

Your New Best Friend:
The Deadline Calendar

GO ON, TRY my interactive calendar of emotional high holy days, regular-version high holy days and more. Hover your cursor over a cinnamon-colored date to see what pops up. Use it to start personal essays, radio pieces and op-eds to submit on deadline. How? Look three months out for radio ideas; six to twelve for magazine pieces. Pick it, write it, submit it. You’re a writer. That’s what writers do.

May 2012
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May, 5 2012

Cinco de Mayo

It is Cinco de Mayo, commemorating the Mexican army’s unlikely victory over French forces in 1862. This is a great one for everything from a memoir about someone else’s cultural holidays, some food memoir perhaps, or a piece of memoir placed at celebration for the day.

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May, 12 2012

Hurricanes Finally Get Named for Men, As Well

It was on this day in 1978 that hurricanes also were named for men. Previously named only for women, this seems like justice, however late. What’s in a name? My sister has something to say about that, named as she is, for a racehorse. I told this story on NPR’s All Things Considered. Have a look.

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May, 16 2012

Fiddlehead Time

It’s Fiddlehead time. Fiddlehead ferns that is, sold and eaten while they are still rolled up. Fiddleheads are the unfurled fronds of a young fern harvested for food consumption. Called a fiddlehead because it resembles the curled ornamentation (called a scroll) on the end of a stringed instrument, such as a fiddle, it is It is also called a crozier since it also resembles the curved staff used by bishops, which has its origins in the shepherd’s crook. Got some food memoir? I lap it up, and write it down here.

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May, 23 2012

The Father of Taxomony is Born

On this day in 1707 was the birth of Carl Linneaus, the man who created order out of chaos by creating a classification system for naming and identifying plants. I created one of those, though mine divides by people, asking if you are either a burger or a burrito. Check it out.

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May, 27 2012

Rachel Carson’s Birthday

On this day in 1907 was the birth of Rachel Carson, one of the greatest advocates the earth will ever know. The New Yorker magazine took a chance on her, first publishing her in 1951 and in 1962 serializing Silent Spring, in which she took on the subject of the ravaging effects of pesticides. The book is still regarded as the cornerstone of the new environmentalism. She inspires me, and I might write a piece of memoir about reading that book or what she has meant to me. You? What creative inspiration does she provoke in you?
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Struggling With Characterization? Think Gifts

December 19, 2011 By marion 3 Comments

IF YOU KNEW US only for an instant, you might think us to be something that we’re not. That’s because I’m the loud sister. Always have been. And loud gets mistaken for tough, especially in women. But Margaret is the tough one, hand-down. Don’t believe me? Two years ago, during an ice storm, she sent me a generator. Delivered to the door. [Read more...]

Memoir How-To: Learning Characterization from A Primary Source

December 15, 2011 By marion 2 Comments

MARGARET WAS EEYORE when we were young, seeing the impossible in everything. My older sister, she has grown up to be Kanga, her youthful negativity evolving into a carefulness for all things, as well as an exactness for detail, reminding us not only to take our medicine, but when to do so. Me, I was born a Tigger, and show little chance of ever growing up to be anybody else. I bounce, and when people try to get me to give up my bounce, I bounce away. [Read more...]

My Burger or Burrito Genetics

October 28, 2011 By marion 4 Comments

BURGER OR BURRITO? Which are you? Maybe you didn’t know that all people can be divided along these culinary categories. They can. Grab something to munch on while I explain it all to you. [Read more...]

Differing Versions? No Problem.

August 12, 2011 By marion Leave a Comment

I TELL STORIES. That would be my sister’s version of our tale, the suggestion being that she writes the truth. For me, even that distinction is a story. Years ago, and on the couch of a good psychiatrist, a question arose about my childhood that made me realize I was in the right hands, professionally speaking. [Read more...]

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