Beth Kephart's Blog, page 255

In which I am blown away by Seussical

All I had to do was look to my left and see my father's full-on smile to know that "Seussical" had put a little magic into every last soul in the sold-out Radnor High auditorium today.  I have my friends Elizabeth Mosier and Chris Mills to thank for including me in this utterly remarkable afternoon at my alma mater.  Alison and Cat, Elizabeth and Chris's two brilliantly talented (and, as you can see for yourself, beautiful) daughters, lit up the stage alongside nearly 100 other impeccably dressed and rehearsed actors, singers, and dancers (including the daughter of my former squash mate at Penn).  Pictures can't really say it all about a production as first-rate, fluid, and endearing as this one.  But they're all I have to give.

Love (and a weekend of goodness)

Following a too-long week of work, I spend the weekend with friends, beautiful people who keep me grounded in the things that finally matter.  You might think that this is a photograph of Mike and Aideen during opening night of "Willy Wonka," in which their daughter starred, and that would be true.  But it is also a photograph that I might title, simply, "Love."



I was thinking about that word, love, following the show last evening while we danced with friends, and I was thinking about it this morning at the early Body Combat at the gym (all us women pumping the air as Teresa egged us fistfully on), and I will be thinking about it later this afternoon, as I sit beside my dad and watch the daughters of Elizabeth Mosier and Chris Mills take their starring roles in "Seussical" at my old haunt, Radnor High.  I might read on Sunday (I shall not, I promise myself, work), and on Monday it's to the Philadelphia Flower Show with Jan Suzanne, one of my city's greatest lights, a lady who will conquer the epidemic of hunger in north Philadelphia (the nation's second hungriest congressional district) if anybody can.



Did I mention that the sun is out, and that I have opened my window, and that my friend Janet just sent me a photograph of her season's first snowdrop?  Is winter, perhaps, behind us?  And isn't spring another word for love?

Dangerous Neighbors Nominated for DABWAHA, the ultimate tournament of romance novels

Last evening I received word from Lillian Li that Dangerous Neighbors (and this was quite the surprise to me) has been nominated for the DABWAHA, the tournament of romance novels run by The TBT LLC, Dear Author, and Smart Bitches.  By the time this is all over, 64 books in eight categories—novella/short story, GLBT, Crossover, YA, Contemporary, and Science Fiction/Fantasy/Paranormal—will have been nominated.  One book will emerge the champion.  The champion will receive, well, bragging rights, of course!  And the results are all up to the readers.



Dangerous Neighbors sits within the following YA list:

Stolen by Lucy Christopher
Raised by Wolves by Jennifer Lynn Barnes
Dangerous Neighbors by Beth Kephart
Things I Know About Love by Kate le Vann
Spirit Bound by Richelle Mead
Anna and the French Kiss by Stephanie Perkins
Bleeding Violet by Dia Reeves
Should you wish to join in with the nominating/voting festivities (or to support Dangerous Neighbors, even!), please journey over to this link.

In him, spring

I scroll through my cache of digital photos looking for green, looking for spring.  I find years past—my garden, Chanticleer, Montreal, Barcelona, Seville, Hilton Head Island, San Miguel, Longwood Gardens, a sudden eruption of color by the New Jersey shore in winter.  In between it all, photo after photo, my son—better than any season.  He'll be home in close to a week, I tell myself.  Sacred time.  Never, ever enough time.



I grow impatient for him, and for spring.

Take a look at the Pumpple Cake

"Wait," I said to my husband.  "It's the Pumpple Cake!"



"The what?"



"The Pumpple!  You know — pumpkin pie baked inside chocolate cake, apple pie baked inside vanilla cake, vanilla buttercream frosting."  I was pointing by this time to a place just beyond the glass at the Reading Terminal Market, where lovely ladies in green Flying Monkey tee-shirts were slicing their world-famous cake-o-vention for an eager lunch-time crowd.  I'd read about the cake.  I'd heard it had been featured on Rachel Ray.  But I'd never seen it, and the baker must have noted my awe (and my raspberry camera) for she (without complaining of my cake-arazzi status) offered this photographic moment unto me.



I offer it, then, unto you.

Mentor: A Memoir/Tom Grimes: Reflections

I have the very dear and very thoughtful Leslie Pietrzyk (we met at Bread Loaf years ago, I caught a glimpse of her once, a fleeting moment, in Alexandria, and we are in touch again, thanks to Facebook) to thank for suggesting Mentor.  This is Tom Grimes's authoritative, unfancy, and bracingly honest memoir about his relationship with Frank Conroy, who was, of course, the author of the classic and important memoir Stop-Time and the long-time director of the Iowa Writers' Workshop.  Grimes came into Conroy's orbit as a student—as a man waiting tables and writing at night, a man desperate to make a literary life.  Grimes becomes, quite quickly, someone more—someone Conroy can drink with, talk to, and selflessly encourage.  And oh, does Conroy selflessly encourage.  He urges Grimes on, he connects him to possibilities, he celebrates Grimes good moments and is there to buffer the bad.  Many writers—too many writers—focus only on themselves, their own work, their own fame.  Conroy clearly was not that sort, and Grimes's portrait of him is not just illuminating, it is restorative.



Yesterday in class we were talking about the difference between self-conscious writing and self-confident writing.  We were talking about the risks that get taken when certain lines are crossed.  Grimes crosses no lines here.  With remarkable quietude he parses his own career—his great ambitions, his successes, his failures, his coming-to-terms.  He sets this against and within the writers' workshop, giving us Conroy as teacher, friend, agent, and enthusiastic reader, reminding us of the power of memoirs that look beyond the author's immediate self. 



"Frank read great writers without any fear," Grimes wrote, for Conroy's eulogy.  "He didn't worry about imitating them; he didn't worry about being overwhelmed by them.  Instead he took pleasure in them and learned from them, and by doing so he elevated reading to the level of art..."



Selflessness.  Enthusiasm.  An author loving and promoting books that are not his own.  This is clear, unmuddied water.  This is spring, after winter.

Pressure Cooker: Praise for the Documentary

With the exception of "Top Chef," "Project Runway," and "So You Think You Can Dance," I watch primarily documentary films when the TV is on. Last night, the film in the queue was "Pressure Cooker," and I'd like to use my blog space today to recommend this work of art to you.  As inspiring as "Mad Hot Ballroom," as affirming of the need for teachers who care, as true a portrait of the northern fringes of my own city as I've yet seen on screen, this is the story of a Mrs. Stephenson of Frankford High, who, in her culinary arts classroom, trains her students to compete for the college scholarships (through the Careers in Culinary Arts Program) that will make all the difference in their lives.   It's completely worth your time.

Can you take teaching too far?

This afternoon, between corporate work, I was reading Mentor:  A Memoir (Tom Grimes) and reflecting on what it is to be a teacher, what it must have been to be Grimes as he entered the orbit of Frank Conroy and the Iowa Writers Workshop.  I kept stopping as I read, thinking of my own strange methods, remembering the cookies that I'd promised myself I'd bake for students who will, among other things, be recalling first kitchens, first loved meals in class tomorrow.  "Don't you think you are going a little too far with all of this?" my husband asks me, as he watches me disassemble (again) my library in search of just the right passage for just this one student; I know it's in there somewhere.



But can you take it too far?  For here are students who want to learn, who have not yet succumbed to norms and utter everydayness, who are still seeking, still searching for their voices?

Dangerous Neighbors, an Academy of Music excerpt

I snapped this photograph long before the Alvin Ailey dancers took the stage at the Academy of Music yesterday.  I was thinking of my twins, in my Centennial novel Dangerous Neighbors—a scene of them together in this music hall, awaiting the arrival of Adelina Patti.  From the book, then:



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It is another world inside. It is stone sheen, gold, and gaslight. "Oh, Anna," Katherine says, and Anna presses her hand to her heart. Even then, even before she knows what will be stolen from her, even before she is aware of the possibility, Katherine wants every inch of this one birthday evening for keeps. She wants to lodge it deep, for all of time. She leads the way up the stairs and through the crowds and toward an arch and through a door and down the aisle toward their cushioned seats, holding Anna's hand. High above is the crystal chandelier, and Anna won't take her eyes off it; in Anna's eyes it shines. It's like the icicles that form on the edge of a roof when the sun gets trapped inside—a cascade of ice and sun. "Like sitting inside a jewelry box," Anna whispers, and Katherine nods.

Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater

You can't take pictures during a theatrical performance, and obviously I never would.  So that this, before you, is the high cake stack of Philadelphia's City Hall, as seen from below, a half hour before the curtains rose on the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater production staged at Philadelphia's own Academy of Music.  Three suites were performed—Dancing Spirit, Forgotten Time, Revelations.  We, the nearly sold-out audience, were on our feet by the end, when the dancers—the women done up in bright yellow church dresses and flopping hats, the men wearing proper black and whites, the props nothing more than golden fans and plunked down stools—were rocking our souls in the bosom of Abraham. We were in love with the slender reach of the their arms, the bewilderingly beautiful musculature of their backs, the roll and whip of their necks.  Mostly, let's be honest, we were in love with their joy; we took some for ourselves when they weren't looking. 



All praise on a sunny Sunday.  All rise to the dance.