Irene Latham's Blog, page 154

SEE GEE'S BEND QUILTS IN NASHVILLE!

Creation Story: Gee's Bend Quilts and the Art of Thornton Dial at the Frist Museum in Nashville. TN now through September 3!

You don't want to miss this exhibit. It's powerful.

I had the opportunity this past weekend to experience it with some friends and my 15-year-old son. I gave a little informal gallery talk about the Gee's Bend quilts -- and learned along with my group about Thornton Dial.

Thanks, y'all! It was fun! Amazing, inspiring art is even MORE amazing and inspiring when shared with amazing, inspiring people.

When we visited the gift shop afterward, I told them about LEAVING GEE'S BEND, and they said they would order it. Good folks, those. Thank you!

For those of you in the area, I invite you to join me for another informal gallery talk, sometime in August -- probably a Saturday afternoon sometime before the kids go back to school Aug. 20. Let me hear from you, if you are interested! irene (at) irenelatham (dot) com.

FOR THE LOVE OF JUNE

What a giving month June is!

Earlier this week I had the opportunity to hang out with amazing author-friend Ginger Rue, author of BRAND NEW EMILY and JUMP -- and her daughters -- at Alabama School Library Association conference.

It was so great to see familiar faces of those wonderful librarians I've already had the great fortune to work with and to meet so many new and fascinating folks too!

Here's Audrey and Ludelphia:


...and me with Ginger:


Also this week I attended a meeting of a book club who had chosen LEAVING GEE'S BEND as their monthly pick. Hostess Lisa Ramsey is such a generous, creative spirit... check out this centerpiece of the books the group has read:


...and here is a close-up of the branch that Ludelphia now perches upon:


And that's not all! Book arts lovers, wait till you see the lovely I got to take home with me:


It's made from book pages! NOT from LEAVING GEE'S BEND. No, that would be hard to do to a hardcover! Lisa bought a book at the dollar store. She said it had "leaving" in the tile. HOW COOL IS THAT?!

For dessert, Lisa served a fresh-from-the-book recipe:



Then I told the group lots of behind-the-scenes stuff about writing and my experiences since the release of LEAVING GEE'S BEND. They were a wonderful audience. Here I am with some of them:



Finally, here's the sweet young person who's kind of the reason for it all: it was because of Hope that Lisa (her mom) chose LEAVING GEE'S BEND. (Hope's teacher read it to the class.) What a sweetheart! And she's a great assistant, too:


Thanks to ALL! May our paths cross again very soon. xo

ZOO ART!

We are back from a lovely little trip to the North Georgia mountains where art was in the air. Allow me to introduce some of my new friends:
GIGI
 JAKARI
RANEE 

ROBERTA
...and here are some of my favorite humans, enjoying some natural art at Anna Ruby Falls:
Thanks, guys, for a great trip!
p.s. One of the most fun things about writing a zoo book was naming all the animals. Three of the names above actually appear in DON'T FEED THE BOY!

RAY BRADBURY, THE POET

It seems every writer has a Ray Bradbury story. Mine includes one of my favorite people on this world, Jim Reed, who was for a time President of the Ray Bradbury fan club. Really.

Jim is also a collector of quotes. When he shared this one with me years and years ago, I felt like Ray Bradbury had written it just for me. I had it printed on the back of my business cards:

“Love. Fall in love and stay in love. Write only what you love, and love what you write. The key word is love. You have to get up in the morning and write something you love, something to live for.”
YES, Ray, yes! And thank you, Jim, for also introducing me to Ray Bradbury the poet:

A poem written on learning
that Shakespeare and Cervantes
both died on the same day
by
Ray Bradbury

Great Shakespeare lost, Cervantes gone
The sun at noon goes down. The dawn
Refuses light. Time holds its breath
At this coincidence of death
Then can it be? and is it so
That these twin gods to darkness go
All in a day! and none to stop
The harvesting of this fell crop
Each in its field, and each so bright
They, burning, hurled away the night.
Yet night returns to seize its due,
One Spirit Spout? No! Death takes two.
First one. The world goes wry from lack
Then two! tips world to balance back.
Two Comet strikes within a week,
First Spain, then dumbstruck England's cheek.
The world grinds mute in dreads and fears
Antarctica melts down to tears,
And Caesars ghosts erupted, rise
All bleeding Amazons from eyes,
An age has ended, yet must stay
As witness to a brutal day
When witless God left us alone
By deathing Will, then Spanish clone.
Who dares to try and gauge each pen
We shall not see such twins again.
Shakespeare is lost, Cervantes dead?
The conduits of God are bled
rest of poem here

And now, don't forget to visit one of the sweetest bloggers on the net, Jama Rattigan for Poetry Friday Roundup!

ONE BOOK EVERY HUMAN SHOULD READ

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TRUE LOVE: Stories told to and by Robert Fulghum.Love stories. Of all types.
 It's out of print, but well worth your effort to find a copy.
Read it, and then we'll compare favorites. :)

FROM THE SAUDI ARABIA FILES

Yesterday I posted at Smack Dab in the Middle about vacations as inspiration.

One of the things I mentioned in that posted was the not-quite-coincidence that Whit's favorite animal in DON'T FEED THE BOY is the giraffe --- and in a letter my mother wrote to her mother, she said that my favorite animal was also the giraffe!

Here's the actual text, from a letter titled "Dear Mama & Ray" on January 18, 1975:

"After naps when we returned to the Alshaik Hotel, we went with some friends to the Riyadh zoo. Friday is the only day you can go in mixed company, and then only from 2-4 pm. It closes at 4 and we arrived around 4:30 when everyone was leaving. Our friend, who is Egyptian and speaks Arabic, was able to get us in any way. We had the whole place to ourselves and got to see all the animals being fed. The zoo was as everything else here - Dirty! Irene had wanted to go ever since we have been here so she was especially happy. The one thing she wanted to see was the giraffe."

Thank you, Mama, for writing home to your mama... and for sharing these letters with me!

POETRY AS APOCALYPSE. OH, AND PEACHES.

Sharing today one of my favorite poems, because I have just eaten the first peach of the season...  and I am feeling grateful.

Peaches seem to have that affect on me. I wrote a poem for my husband that includes a peach called "Anniversary." (It appears in my book WHAT CAME BEFORE.)

But oh, read this one by Li-Young Lee:

 
From Blossoms
From blossoms comes
this brown paper bag of peaches
we bought from the boy
at the bend in the road where we turned toward
signs painted Peaches. From laden boughs, from hands,
from sweet fellowship in the bins,
comes nectar at the roadside, succulent
peaches we devour, dusty skin and all,
comes the familiar dust of summer, dust we eat. O, to take what we love inside,
to carry within us an orchard, to eat
not only the skin, but the shade,
not only the sugar, but the days, to hold
the fruit in our hands, adore it, then bite into
the round jubilance of peach. There are days we live
as if death were nowhere
in the background; from joy
to joy to joy, from wing to wing,
from blossom to blossom to
impossible blossom, to sweet impossible blossom.- Li-Young Lee  

And now a quote from Mr. Lee:

 "There’s eclipse, covering, and there's apocalypse, uncovering. I think poetry provides a very important service. It uncovers our deepest identity. When we read a poem, that’s what we get – our deepest identity."

 - Li-Young Lee, A GOD IN THE HOUSE:Poets Talk about Faith 

For more poetic goodness, please visit Carol at Carol's Corner for Poetry Friday Roundup! 

WHERE'S THE MADNESS, ROSE?

So I was reading in Smithsonian Magazine the other day this profile on Roseanne Cash by Ron Rosenbaum.

That's Roseanne, daughter of Johnny.

It's a great article about love and physics and songmaking. Which means it's about me and you and what it means to live and create in this world.

One of my favorite parts in the article really speaks to me right now, when I am working working working to get a story just right:

Then she remembers something her mentor told her about songwriting. John Stewart "always said, 'Where's the madness?' You know, if I would try to write a perfect song. 'Where's the madness, Rose?'"

Wishing all you your own brand of madness, whatever your creative endeavors!

HOMESCHOOLING: BEST & WORST

As many of you know, I've spent the last calendar year homeschooling my youngest son.

Educating him has been an adventure from the start: he spent K-3 in public school and 4-5 in a Montessori school. When we became aware of his passion for percussion (about 3rd grade), we set our sights on Alabama School of Fine Arts, a specialty public school for grades 7-12 that requires an extensive audition process and only accepts about 1/3 of applicants into their music department.  With that as our goal, we chose to spend this last year, 6th grade, homeschooling.

I've homeschooled in the past, so I wasn't fearful about the legalities or curricula. I learned the first go-around that unschooling is the best approach for our family. While I did print out the Alabama curriculum standards for 6th grade, I did not worry one iota about testing. That's right: Eric has not taken a single test the entire last year. Our goal has been learning. And given Eric's interests, it should come as no surprise that the majority of his learning has been in the area of music.

Great news: he auditioned for ASFA and was accepted into their program for next year!

For his final homeschool assignment, I asked him to write a paper about the best and the worst parts of his homeschool year.
On his worst list: "no friends"

On his best list: "being able to triple my abilities music-wise"

And here is my most favorite part of his paper:

"Otherwise, I have created myself into me."
He went on to explain all the things he learned about himself. The paper sounds like it was written by a college student. This has been a year of self-discovery for him. And how thrilled am I to have been such a big part of that??

For me, the best part has been spending time with my kid, getting to know him better, all the great talks while driving in the car. The worst part has been feeling like I haven't quite been able to give him everything he needs. He's beyond me in so many ways. And I worry some about how he will adjust as he moves back to a traditional school setting after all the mad freedom of this year.

He loves music so much, I have to trust he'll be just fine.

I know this for sure: I wouldn't trade this past year with him for anything.

PROFOUND THOUGHT FOR MEMORIAL DAY

Most Memorial Days we are on family vacation.

Last year we were in Washington, D.C.

It was hot.

It was crowded.

We were miserable.


Did I mention it was hot?


We were so miserable we cut our trip short and went home a day early.


Which is why, I guess, that this year it feels like a vacation not to be on vacation.

It's quiet.

Even Hwy. 280 is relatively empty.

I've had like 14 naps.

Everyone seems happy.


This may be our new Memorial Day tradition! Hope whatever this day holds for you is exactly what you want. xo