Serendipity: NARROW ESCAPES

5/15/10

NARROW ESCAPES

Theme of the Month: Narrow Escapes

Wherever there is danger, there lurks opportunity; whenever there is opportunity, there lurks danger. The two are inseparable. They go together. ~ Earl Nightingale

DANGEROUS ROMANCE

Carolyn Healy

Have you ever been seduced by a house, or in the case of this tale, a townhouse? When I fell in love with it, it didn’t even exist. It’s the way a lot of romances begin, with a vision of something that isn’t really there.

It was shingle-style, with stone foundation and two porches, one screened in. It was roomy for a townhouse, meaning I wouldn’t have had to get rid of any of my lifetime accumulation of furniture I’m apparently not done with yet. The English basement even had room for the pool table and the juke box.

The sales team had it conjured on a full-wall video mural depicting the full sweep of the new neighborhood, to be constructed on the site of a recently leveled downtrodden apartment development. The sales office stood on an adjacent property, accessible via a circuitous route involving three left turns. MORE . . .

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LOSING CONTROL

Ellie Searl

In June of 2000, Ed and I took off on a road trip from the suburbs of Chicago to Tennessee. Our trip was two-fold: the Unitarian Universalist General Assembly in Nashville followed by a mini-vacation adventure through the countryside. We shunpiked our way through small towns - those pinpoints off major highways - mere outlines of their old glory: insurance companies, video stores, furniture shops, and a couple of bars across from boarded-up movie theaters and department stores-turned-thrift shops. Ed and I tried to imagine what the towns might have looked like before cross-country highways and discount superstores sent them into oblivion. MORE . . .

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About Carolyn and Ellie

Carolyn B Healy is a therapist-turned-writer who has invested hundreds of hours listening to people as they rewrite their life stories. While her interests include serious things like grief, resilience and transformative change, her vantage point allows her to address them with insight and a certain dark humor. A lifelong Chicagoan, she grew up the only child of a single mom, which fueled her curiosity about how other people live, and strengthened her backbone. She has been a columnist for her local newspaper and is writing a book on finding the hidden gifts in grieving.

Ellie Searl writes of human nature - the ordinary and the eccentric - getting to the heart of life’s yearnings, idiosyncrasies, and ambiguities. The splendor of the Adirondack Mountains and Lake Champlain seeped into her being, as did the rhythms of small-town life. Her slice-of-life storytelling draws inspiration from rich experiences with diverse cultures, quirky personalities, and unusual encounters while living, working, and raising a family in New York, Delaware, Vermont, Ontario, Quebec, Ohio, and Illinois. Ellie’s stories reflect her passion for justice, equality, and freedom of the spirit. She taught the art of writing to Chicagoland middle-schoolers, whose curiosity, energy, and enthusiasm for life gave her insight into the dreams of the sometimes disregarded. When not writing, Ellie designs and formats books. She also creates and manages websites and blogs.