Author: Jackie Pick

Jackie Pick is a former teacher and current writer living in the Chicago area. She is a contributing author to multiple anthologies, including Multiples Illuminated, So Glad They Told Me: Women Get Real about Motherhood, Here in the Middle, as well as the and the literary magazines The Sun and Selfish. She received Honorable Mention from the Mark Twain House and Museum for her entry in the Royal Nonesuch Humor Writing Competition. Jackie is a contributing writer at Humor Outcasts, and her essays have been featured on various online sites including McSweeney's, Belladonna Comedy, Mamalode, The HerStories Project, and Scary Mommy. A graduate of the University of Chicago and Northwestern University, Jackie is co-creator and co-writer of the award-winning short film Fixed Up, and a proud member of the 2017 Chicago cast of Listen To Your Mother.

Suburbialis Clangum: A Melodic Guide to Your Neighborhood Wilderness

Nature May Abhor a Vacuum but Suburbia Sure Loves a Leaf Blower.

In the verdant suburban sprawl, the uninitiated masses vainly search for the quaint silence once celebrated in pastoral myths — charming, perhaps, to those with less refined tastes. The modern sophisticate, however, appreciates the richness offered by the incessant, blaring symphonies of human achievement. Why pine for the whisper of wind when one can revel in the roar of an arsenal of machinery running day or night (or both!)? Here, in these cultivated fields of progress, the glorious din of civilization justly overrules the silence sought by the hoi polloi. This sonic landscape is not for those unfortunates who crave a rough-hewn quietude, but rather for the discerning citizen who understands that true progress resonates through the hum of industry. The air simply must crackle with the sounds of civilization’s upkeep, the resounding overture of spring.

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