Serendipity: REMEMBRANCE

11/15/11

REMEMBRANCE

THEME: REMEMBRANCE
She glances at the photo, and the pilot light of memory flickers in her eyes. ~ Frank Deford

What Photographs Can Do

Carolyn B Healy

My father is 14 or 15 in the photo, posing with the big band he helped organize in high school. He wears two-tone saddle shoes, neatly tied. They look new. The photo has been hanging on my family picture wall for 15 years waiting for me to really look at it. I finally did.

In any old picture, the first thing I notice is the shoes. They hint at normal life, intimate suggestions of routine and circumstance. As I study his picture, I imagine him tying them on that morning, and wonder what was going on in those minutes: was he bickering with his sisters; what breakfast smells wafted upstairs; what was on his mind? MORE . . .

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Spokes People

Ellie Searl

I joined the fall session because I wanted to get the district-required “Teaching with Intention” workshop over with as soon as possible. The class would begin again in November with fifteen more teachers, and then again in January, and so on every other month until each teacher had completed the course.

The six-week seminar would spotlight a new and improved instructional system— the latest fad dreamed up by some scholastic guru—to reverse shoddy teacher competence. And when this maharishi of scholarship blitzed the nation with a bigger, better paradigm, our administration didn’t want to be the only district holding chalk without a board. 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.