Beth Kephart's Blog, page 298

Shoeing a horse

He'd come from Florida to shoe the horses, to wield 28 years of knowing.  I asked him, Did he mind if I watched?  He said he didn't mind much.  I asked him, How is it that the horse does not flinch as each of those six, long, sturdy nails are driven into that one hoof?  He said, Think of the tip of your fingernail.  Would you feel it, if a nail were driven through?

After all that, I came home...

Two boys, a girl, and no books

Philadelphia's Lincoln Financial Field on the occasion of the best-attended soccer match ever in our city.  U.S. vs Turkey.  The U.S. wins.  The crowd is a stampede.  The girl survives (and has fun).  The horses are down the street when she gets home.

James Lecesne and Virgin Territory

"I have been told," a friend wrote, "that the BEA is a non-event."

For so many reasons, it wasn't that for me.

Consider (among so much else), this:  I spent an Egmont-sponsored lunch rotating through tables with actor/Laura Geringer author/activist James Lecesne (I struggled with the listing of those attributes; James is all three, equally, and more).  We interviewed each other.  We discovered intersections.  We looked across the table and saw, in each other, an author who cares, first and fore...

Scenes from the Book Blogger Convention...

which was so well run, so informative, and so rippled through with companionable energy:

The Javitz Convention Center.  Yours truly flanked by Natasha (Maw Books Blog) and Nicole (Linus's Blanket).  The faithful attendees, of the very last BEA week day, after the very last session, as seen from the very last seat of the Author/Blogger Relationship panel discussion.  Yours truly with the one and only Lenore.  Yours truly with the always-kind Melissa of The Betty and Boo Chronicles.  And never l...

Scenes from the BEA

I was out of the house by 4:30 AM, and the day unfurled at lightening speed (save for the trains, which were both on the rather too late and slow side).  In the first photo:  The Egmont lunch for authors, booksellers, and librarians, held on the upper floor of a garment-district art gallery.  In the second:  Egmont Publisher Elizabeth Law, the remarkable James Lecesne (about whom I will soon be writing far more), Laura Geringer (who edits both James and me), and yours truly (in pink, because ...

A student of teaching

It was hot, it was humid, it was teaching at Chanticleer in an unpredictable spring, but those 15 Agnes Irwin girls were willing and far more than able—reeling themselves backward and forward in time, willing themselves to remember. 

The thing about teaching is you never know.  You prepare your prompts, you know your own heart, you know what you want to leave behind, but you do not know what will make a student vulnerable to the process.  I never teach the same thing twice.  I have become a st...

What does our time on earth add up to?

I'll be joining the writers of Agnes Irwin on the sloping terrain of Chanticleer today; we'll be at work on memoir.  Last night, while again not sleeping, I found these words in Natalie Goldberg's Old Friend from Far Away.  They are the right place to begin.

"We are a dynamic country, fast-paced, ever-onward.  Can we make sense of love and ambition, pain and longing?  In the center of our speed, in the core of our forward movement, we are often confused and lonely.  That's why we have turned s...

Right Now

More peonies from the garden.  The rocking chair I once carried a mile home, nine months pregnant, in the heat of July, from an antique store.  The door to my office.

I have been finishing corporate projects.  Dumping old files from cabinets.  Taking books to libraries.  Fixing a split roof.  Renovating a laundry room.  Painting doors.  Taking clothes to Good Will.  Mailing gently used textbooks to Amazon.com.  Rearranging my son's room so that it actually accommodates my son (he may be a lot ...

The winged peony mutates (and a quote from Nine)

Last night, watching the movie Nine, these words:  To create is to forgive yourself in public. 

You could teach an entire course on that, I thought.