Beth Kephart's Blog, page 18

my parents' wedding album—found in the final cleaning of my father's house

This afternoon I joined my father at the family home for one more clean out. It was the attic this time, my sister's things, the leftover tools in the furnace room. Enough to fill the garage, once again, with bags and boxes and mountains of trash.

Every cleaning has offered its reward. This time the reward was gigantic, and unexpected. My parents' wedding album. Stuffed on a shelf in an attic beside an old microscope and beneath a box of bleached sand dollars.

I snapped these photos quickly.

Aren't they beautiful? And didn't my grandparents have style? And look at the kiss my grandmother gives my mother.

Treasure.

it is time to be among friends

Yesterday I met my dear friend Debbie Levy (our friendship tracing back to a happy pairing at an Alexandria, VA, bookstore) at Longwood Gardens and, over lunch with one of her good friends, celebrated the good news in Debbie's life.

Last week, I walked Valley Forge Park with my dear friend Nazie Dana (our friendship tracing back to early young adulthood and a crazy/lovely architectural magazine venture) and, through paths carved out of tall grasses, reflected on much that has happened since we saw each other last.

Today I will walk the Radnor Trail with my dear friend Ellen Brackett (our friendship tracing back to our college days), and, as we pass the signposts of history, we will speak of sons and ideas and homes.

This is how I spend these days. In mourning since Orlando, absolutely. In celebration of the love there very much still is.

everything I am, in a single window

If I were to name the single window in my living room, I would name it "self portrait."

"self portrait," lowercase, because we can't take ourselves that seriously, but still, here, is the microcosm of me. A lamp my mother gave me. A skull I bought for my husband. Growing things, courtesy of my father. A polymer bowl, bought from the shop that now features the clay of this skull-loving ceramics genius. Up above, a ring box from when I was a kid, a glass hummingbird, a glass sea horse, a pair of ornamental ice skates because I could once land a double lutz. A car carved by a friend of my son. Art from Krakow. A small bit of porcelain that I'd given my mother and then gave back to myself, in the long year of cleaning her house. A fan from Spain.

The world beyond. The neighbors with whom I've become friends again.

Sometimes the living takes long.

CE Morgan on beauty, evil, lack, and not asking permission

In 2009, CE Morgan's All the Living showed up on my doorstep for review. I didn't know who this writer was. I had no expectations. But, as I wrote then, I was very quickly awed:

<!-- /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-parent:""; margin:0in; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";} @page Section1 {size:8.5in 11.0in; margin:1.0in 1.25in 1.0in 1.25in; mso-header-margin:.5in; mso-footer-margin:.5in; mso-paper-source:0;} div.Section1 {page:Section1;} </style><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;">But here was a first novel so self-assured and unto itself, so unswerving in its purpose, so strummed through with a peculiar, particular, electrifying sound, that I found myself reading in a state of highest perplexion, and also gratitude and awe.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>Maybe the gratitude came first, for <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">All the Living </i>is a novel about the hardest things—about grief and lonesomeness, about desiring much and staying true, about loving through and forgiveness.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>It’s a novel that makes you think on all of that newly, and that spares nothing and no one in the process.</span>  </blockquote><br />Recently Morgan published her second novel, <i>The Sport of Kings,</i> and it is getting the kind of attention a writer of this caliber should. I plan to read it. I have not yet. The purpose of this post is to share an interview CE Morgan conducted with <i>Commonweal</i> magazine. She's not one to talk too much about her process. This interview provides a rare glimpse. I highly recommend that the interview be <a href="https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/pr... in its entirety, here.</a> But for now, I share some of the fragments of the conversation that have me thinking on this day—and will keep me thinking for a very long time.<br /><br /><span style="color: #b45f06;"><b>On moral beauty and evil:</b></span> "<b></b>I think of moral beauty as what is the good and the just—terms perhaps best defined by their opposite: evil. Evil is the willingness to do damage to the other; its maximal expression is murder, but it includes a great deal of subtle and not-so-subtle injuries as it advances to that extreme. Evil acts reduce the other to an object, a being to its component parts, and obliterate subjectivity. Evil’s breeding ground is a lack of empathy. So I locate moral beauty in an other-regarding ethic. Or perhaps it’s better to say it’s not <i>located</i> anywhere, because it’s not a static entity. It’s love, and love is not a feeling but an action."<br /><br /><span style="color: #b45f06;"><b>On the power of lack: </b></span> "I often think there are three primary responses to suffering—rage, intoxication, or growth. We either want revenge for our pain, or we numb ourselves with the endless array of intoxicants available to us, from drugs to overwork, or we grow in empathy. Emptiness can transform into spaciousness; lack can become an agent of social action. But I think many of us struggle to remain on that third path without backsliding into the other two. I do." <br /><br /><span style="color: #b45f06;"><b>On writing the other: </b></span>"The injunction to justify race-writing, while ostensibly considerate of marginalized groups, actually stifles transracial imagination and is inextricable from those codes of silence and repression, now normalized, which have contributed to the rise of the racist right in our country. When you leave good people afraid to speak on behalf of justice, however awkwardly or insensitively, those unafraid to speak will rise to power."<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><div class="feedflare">
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talking and writing STORY, at Barnes and Noble Devon, 2 PM, Sunday

When the Barnes and Noble (Devon) wrote to ask if I'd participate in the first national Teen Festival this weekend, I said yes, of course.

And then we began to talk about what I might actually do.

It's been decided. I'll be reading from This Is the Story of You —something I haven't done, save for a paragraph here or there. And then we'll set my book aside and spend some time talking and thinking about memoir—and your seaside/vacation-centric memories.

The event specifics are here. We hope you'll join us and help make this national festival a success.

June 12, 2 PM
Teen Book Festival
This Is the Story of You
Reading and Writing Workshop
 Barnes and Noble
Devon, PA

At the 120th Radnor High Commencement

Last evening, at the 120th commencement of Radnor High School, I watched 293 beautiful students cross the stage at the Villanova Pavilion. Listened to families and friends roar for them. Admired the teachers and administrators, librarians and coaches, band leaders and artisans who have helped lead them to now. There was Adam Thomson, a young man who grew up in my church. There was Morganne Boulden, whose father, Tom, was (back in our own Radnor day) and still is a deeply appreciated friend. There were the builders of non-profit foundations, the athletes, the painters, philosophers, mathematicians, the seekers and doers—each one special.

Principal Dan Bechtold, Superintendent Dr. Michael J. Kelly, and students Andrew Ciatto and Katie Wakiyama—thank you for making last night so entirely memorable for me. A condensed version of my remarks will run in this Sunday's Philadelphia Inquirer, on the front page of the Currents section. For now, this, below. For always, congratulations.

<!-- /* Font Definitions */ @font-face {font-family:Cambria; panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:3 0 0 0 1 0;} /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-parent:""; margin:0in; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:Cambria; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} @page Section1 {size:8.5in 11.0in; margin:1.0in 1.25in 1.0in 1.25in; mso-header-margin:.5in; mso-footer-margin:.5in; mso-paper-source:0;} div.Section1 {page:Section1;} </style> <br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">The sky was on fire when I rose to write these words. A swell of orange. A streak of flax. Mad and wonderful cinnamon reds. The sky was on fire, but there was also, oddly, rain, and the comfort of bird talk, and the huff of an old bus traveling the road just beyond. A school bus, in its end-of-school-year rounds.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">I sat on my couch and I thought about you. I thought about your journey to now, to this place beneath this famous dome. Your classmates beside you. Your admirers in the stands. Your teachers and coaches and administrators near. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Your mortarboards crushing your coifs. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Your tassels eager for the toss.</span></div><div class="feedflare">
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morning sun on books and clay (the art of simplifying)

On Sunday afternoon, my husband and I sorted through the last of the tools in my father's house, leaving that beautiful home virtually empty—a year-long odyssey of epic proportions.

Once back at my own house, I began to do what had long needed to be done. There had been books in piles everywhere. Books in bins. Stories I couldn't write because of all the mental and physical clutter. The quantities of things were overwhelming. Simplifying meant taking some 450 books from this little house—driving many bags of them straight to The Spiral Bookcase in Manayunk, an independent that specializes in books both new and old and that is run by the generous Ann Tetreault.

While my husband built our new bookcase, I carried the remaining books—these books, oh these books—from room to room. I decided: Novels and nonfiction on one wall in the family room. Picture books, middle grade books, young adult novels, and all things Horace Kephart and Daniel D'Imperio (my great grandfather and beloved uncle) on the other family room wall. Poems and journals in the case to the left in my office. Grammar, reference, and natural history books in the case to the right. My own stuff (the books, the anthologies, the literary magazines, and a few favorite corporate projects) in the shelves to the left of my desk, overseen by my muse, the giraffe, who came all the way from Africa to be with me and whose name is She. She has been worried about me lately. She's more at peace now.

And then, in the new bookshelves in the room we have officially christened the "Juncture Workshop" room, the memoirs, the essay collections, the hybrid novels/memoirs, my Tin House collection, and those novels by authors whose work I have collected in multiples. A few pieces of clay that Bill and I have jointly made (he throws the shapes, I glaze). My four bright binders stuffed with teachable memoir excerpts and essays—all the material that will inspire those five-day workshops on a farm and by the sea. And room for the many books yet to come.

I feel lighter, less bundled up inside my own head, more ready for whatever is next, anticipatorily efficient. Just a few days ago, I had to dig through triple-stacked shelves or those heavy, bottomless bins to find the book I needed. Over the past year, I bought multiple copies of books I already had, because I could never find the original source. I bought way too many e-books (I'm not the biggest fan of e-books) because the boats of books had swelled.

I'm breathing now.

on teaching memoir (the Juncture Workshop files)

It occurs to me that you might have noticed that I'm posting less frequently on the blog these days. In part, that is to spare you.

(You're welcome.)

In part it's because I'm devoting so much time to reading and planning the Juncture memoir newsletter, which is sent out to our list once a month. Juncture Notes is free, and you can sign up here to read my interviews with memoirists, my reflections on the form, and the work that our readers send in, among other things. (Juncture Notes also features the original work of my multi-media artist husband. His clay. His photographs. His 3-D images.)

But much of my absence here on the blog can be directly tied to the image above. I call these the Juncture Workshop files. It is a long-ongoing project—a massive effort to cull, save, sort the memoir thoughts I have, the excerpts I love, the exercises that occur to me in the middle of each night—all so that I can teach most effectively both at Penn and at the five-day Juncture memoir workshops we're conducting in McClure, PA, in September, and in Cape May, NJ, in November. (More details on both here.)

I'm not close to done. I'll never be done. I've just ordered eight more books—and a new bookcase. In fact, within two weeks one room out of the seven rooms in my house will be devoted solely to memoir—to the hundreds of memoirs that I own, to the files I am building, to the essays of those who are joining our workshops.

Call me obsessed.

It's all right.

I get that all the time.

stop and notice when something beautiful happens

At the gym where I Body Combat on Saturday mornings and sneak in thirty-minute-CNN enhanced workouts two or three additional days each week, I qualify as the most poorly dressed. I have one pair of work-out pants. Four T-shirts, two of them now dryer-reduced to ten-year-old-girl status. Having been recently reminded of my poor fashion sense by a far-better heeled friend (it was suggested, firmly and more than once, that I would highly benefit from a stylist who would tell me with emphatic speed that black turtlenecks are out), it seemed time to get new T-shirts. Yesterday, as I waited for what turned out to be a beautiful conversation with Melissa Jensen and Cordelia Jensen (and the fabulous Ashley) at the Penn Book Center, I headed over to the Penn Bookstore to buy two replacement alum shirts.

And then I was stopped—completely stopped—by this. Story, center stage, in the window.

I need to thank someone, I whispered, to the young man at the information desk inside.

I am not a writer you'll find at many of the big shows. I'm not on the traveling circuit. Infinitely more interested in writing the next, in writing it better, in reading the work of others, in sharing what I find out, I don't do what most writers do to advance my personal career. And so I feel particularly blessed when the utterly unexpected happens. When those who read the books I write take the time to tell me about the experience. When my love for my city is acknowledged in humbling ways. When my high school invites me to speak to the graduating seniors on commencement day . When my alma mater (and employer) turns a book I wrote into window art. When people I respect—Melissa, Cordelia, Ashley—share fragments of their worlds.

There are so many measures in a writer's life—indeed, in any life. The trick, I think, is to stop and notice when something beautiful happens—however unquantifiable. And then, of course, to say thank you.

fascinators and fascinations at the Devon Grand Prix (final photographs)

Grand Prix night at the Devon Horse Show. The hats and fascinators are out in force. The speed demons get the sand to churn. The reverend waits to sing the national anthem, and the bugler checks the time. The horses fly. The crowd is electrified.

Leaving, I see a Radnor High School friend. "Are you ready for next week?" he asks me.

"Yes," I said, with rare confidence. "I am."