Country Poet

This weekend started off at the Lancaster Literary Guild with a poetry reading from Barbara Buckman Strasko, Lancaster's Poet Laureate. Sam Atlee also read some of his shorts stories. I ended the weekend by going to a country music concert with many artists and headlined by JoDee Messina.
Poetry and country music. Makes me want to get dressed tomorrow in a black turtleneck accessorized with a rhinestone belt.

Perez Hilton vs NPR

Last week I went to my first board meeting for the Lancaster Literary Guild. I was asked to be on the board by the founder of the guild, and I took it as quite an honor. I also knew that it would be a commitment--two years, minimum. In addition to monthly meetings, I'll be asked to attend and help at functions and to help on committees. I was a little leery to accept such a call. My kids are picking up speed in their activities, and my amount of parental involvement in these activities is a bit of an unknown. True, I am giving up PTA committees at Reamstown Elementary, but who knows what my daughter's new school, a performing arts center, will ask of its parents.

Looking around the room at the literary guild meeting, I am pretty sure that I am one of the few with kids still at home. But I am willing to give it a try. It will stretch me in more ways than just effort. Already the discussions were flying around the room. I heard phrases like posthumanist philosophy and questions such as, "Did you read that story in the New Yorker?" It isn't that I felt stupid or ignorant sitting with this group, but that I felt out of touch. A lifetime ago, I was one of the informed parties--at least informed enough to carry my own weight in a conversation. I am not going to say that having children has dulled my intellectual powers, but there is something to be said for having to devote part of your brain to survival of the young. The incessant voice that seems to play out: Stay aware in the parking lot. Eat your salad; I am sure it's the only green thing you've eaten all day. Your teacher emailed me and you are missing three assignments. Do you have your shoes for dance? Both pairs? Where are your rubber bands. Do you want to wear those braces until the end of time?
Is it any wonder that when I get a moment of downtime, I go to Perez Hilton to peruse the stupid doings of celebrities and wannabees? Now, here is where I say that I've kicked the habit. If you go to the history list on my computer, you won't find Perez listed. (It isn't that I think that smart people and Perez readers are mutually exclusive--just that my brain can't handle the dichotomy of desire to name Angelina's twins with the ability to discuss the the lineage of magical realism in literature.) Maybe I am ready to get back into the intellectual game. I used to listen to NPR when I was at work. Now that I am writing, I don't listen to it anymore. I can't write and listen at the same time. I could paint and listen, but I do better work while listening to Tina Turner or Maroon 5. Locally, I have trouble getting NPR on my car radio, but I did manage to get a classical station going while I was driving home from the meeting. (Listening to Britney Spears and Miley Cyrus would have really undermined my resolve.)

So what is a woman to do to feel smart and informed? If only there was a blog where I could get in tiny little hits of information with pictures like Perez. Last weekend, I went to the Perelman Building at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and saw three small exhibits: Fashioning Kimono: Art Deco and Modernism in Japan, Designing Modern: 1920 to the present, and Transcending the Literal: Photographs by Ansel Adams from the Collection. The shows were small and digestible, but left me with the feeling that I had expanded my horizons. Maybe that's what I need to do: each week make a small effort to branch out and add something to my knowledge base. It may not be much, but I am a work in progress.

Jill Ker Conway

Yesterday I attended a lecture of the Lancaster Literary Guild. The speaker was noted memoirist and historian Jill Ker Conway. I was mesmerized by her speech which included passages from her best-known work: The Road from Coorain. A native of the Australian Outback, Ms. Ker Conway is a historian and an educator who resides in Massachusetts. The first female president of Smith College, she has studied the memoirs of many women before deciding to write her own. She wanted to present a story that she felt was missing from the culture--that of the ambitious woman. Not that there is a lack of ambitious women, just that women tend to hide that fact. They deny their agency when they give accounts of their lives. Ker Conway also wanted to write a tale with a feminist hero that proved you can talk of female empowerment in a way that does not denigrate men. Indeed, she was surrounded by men in her formative years in Australia's underpopulated interior. Only once a month would she meet up with someone who was not in her immediate family in which Ker Conway was the only girl. Her father was a real man, not some cartoon of the Australian man as in Crocodile Dundee. Though her portrayals of men are sympathetic, don't expect a romance. Her journey is just that---hers. When she does get married (an event that happens in the second installment of her three-book memoirs) she continues to maintain a path of her own making and does not simply join her husband on his.
I have yet to read her memoir. I am currently reading Three Cups of Tea (another blog entry altogether.) But I can't wait. As a writer who has contemplated a children's book in which a female character goes on a hero's journey, I want to find the ways in which gender plays a role in such things as a "life quest." From the bits she has read to us, these are exactly the kinds of themes that Jill Ker Conway plays with in her memoirs. Joseph Campbell, move over. I am about to discover the heroine's journey.

So many things in Spring

I have a lot going on this spring...to say the least. In additional to my professional activities, the kids are participating in track and a musical, both of which require lots of practices and lots of surreying (the word sounds more bucolic than taxiing). Mark and I are making a few weekend trips both as a couple and with our family. One of those trips includes us all running in a road race--my first in two years. Yikes! Another includes matron-of-honor duties. Double Yikes! I am teaching religious education to my son's class. The curriculum centers on tapping into the creation forces that made life possible and becoming creators ourselves. Art, poetry, music--It is right up my ally. (Except that music part. Seven years of piano lessons for naught.) I am also accompanying my daughter on an overnight environmental field trip in which I will teach about the food chain.

But it is the professional doings that I want to highlight. I spent the morning updating the NEWS section of my site, and I hope that folks will check it out. A variety of interesting stuff going on with which I am pleased to be involved. The Lancaster Literary Guild is having its first ever literary festival. The Lancaster YWCA is hosting an art show as an avenue of hope in the fight against domestic violence. Other things, too. Check them out and let me know what looks interesting to you.

No Mo' NaNoWriMo

I am throwing in the towel of NaNoWriMo. The main reason is that the whole thing is paralyzing me with fear. I overcommited and didn't plan very well. NaNoWriMo is an excellent idea and I am sure I will pursue it in the future, but I will have an outline, completed character studies and...I don't know... a clue?



I think I need to regroup. What I would love is a writer's retreat with other writers. Perhaps I could get beyond this stumbling I have been doing. In a way, I do have the makings of a retreat--just not in the traditional format. I am conducting two journaling workshops this week and that always makes the creative juices flow. I think it is the community aspect that helps me. And on Monday, I am going to hear Francine Prose speak. She wrote many books, but among them, Reading Like A Writer, which I own and have read. Ms. Prose isn't limited to one kind of book. She has written novels, articles, children's books, nonfiction, and humor. My kind of gal. (I believe the term is multiple personality.)



And in between teaching and going to a lecture, I hope to get back to writing something just for love of writing. Maybe that is the real key.



I am committed to and will continue with my walking and blogging commitments, including the gratitude. Today I am thankful for the Lancaster Literary Guild who promotes reading, writing, and brings wonderful programs to the area.