The civil unrest of the sixties and seventies has been over for almost fifty years, but in Arms Wide Open: A Midwife’s Journey, Patricia Harman (Beacon Press) manages to remind my generation (Generation X), and generations after, exactly what it was that those hippies were trying to accomplish.
In the catacombs of the Belz Factory Outlet Mall hung a pair of rayon Day-Glo orange shorts with a fat black elastic waistband, the missing piece to my patchwork fashion sense. My mother didn’t flinch when I pulled it off the steel carousel with “clearance” in starburst font on top.
My husband runs, too, but to say that we are both runners is like saying that the man who gave us “Pants on the Ground” and Beethoven are both musicians. Already forgot “Pants on the Ground” and the man who gave it to us? Exactly.
You are five years old. You play with Strawberry Shortcake and My Little Ponies and have three Cabbage Patch Kids. You cry every night when you think no one is listening. Your mother walks in on you and asks what’s wrong and you look up at her with 40-year old eyes and say, “I don’t know.” Mother takes you to see a “talking doctor,” as she calls it. A doctor for you to talk to, Lisa. You climb into the gigantic leather chair and notice all the spider plants hanging from the ceiling. You aren’t too interested in this man; you want to swing from the vines of the plants.
What makes you fall in love with writing? What makes you tumble into the story on the page the minute the words enter your body?
For me, it’s the details. I care about the music of the language and what the writing has to teach me about people and life; in the end, I want those bigger themes to change me. But as I read creative nonfiction, and the world of story rises before me, I want to see it, taste it, smell it, hear it, and feel it on my skin.
There was a knock on the door. The door was open, but she knocked anyway. I didn’t know it then, but she wasn’t allowed to enter the room. “Hey.” she said. “Did you just get here?” This seemed to me a pointless question – we both knew I had just gotten there.
When the phone rings on Sunday night I know it’ll be him. I answer chirpily, like I always do. And like always we talk about where the rig is right now, what the weather is like with him, what the weather is like here, little nuggets of nothing.
I love meeting people, online and in person. While I can be found most often on Twitter and Facebook, when it comes to professional networking I turn to LinkedIn. I am a huge proponent of this online network for many reasons – from job-hunting to public relations opportunities. That’s why I was super excited to receive an advanced copy of The Power Formula for LinkedIn Success: Kickstart Your Business, Brand and Job Search – and an interview with its author, Wayne Breitbarth. I caught up with Wayne in early March, just as his book was released by Greenleaf Book Group.
A big thank you to fellow memoir writer Amye Barrese Archer, also a reader and contributor of Hippocampus, for the interview on her blog, First Person. We chatted about the inspiration for the magazine, my hopes and dreams for it, and even discussed Russel Brand. Read the story, New Literary Magazine for Memoir and Creative…
To celebrate the launch of Hippocampus Magazine, we’re giving away $100 to one lucky reader. To be eligible to win, simply interact with us at our online launch party. We’ll keep track of all comments of substance (meaning, we just don’t want you to say, “Cool!), tweets and retweets, and Facebook shares throughout the day*.…
