Beth Kephart's Blog, page 299
May 23, 2010
Dangerous Neighbors: The Research File
Mapping the story, making things right. Scenes from a research file.
She was the perfect bride
(so calm and so in love with him), and he is so deeply in love with her. Congratulations, Moira and Yuo-Chen. 
May 22, 2010
Annie Dillard on noticing
I knew what I was doing at Paw-Paw: I was beginning the lifelong task of tuning my own gauges. I was there to brace myself for leaving. I was having my childhood. But I was haunting it, as well, practically reading it, and preventing it. How much noticing could I permit myself without driving myself round the bend? Too much noticing and I was too self-conscious to live; I trapped and paralyzed myself, and dragged my friends down with me, so we couldn't meet each other's...
Vast
Jeremy and I sat here, high above the vast Devon Horse Show Grounds, late yesterday afternoon. The fair is a week away, but work—sanding, painting, stuffing the carnival shelves with fuzzy victory toys—goes on. Sitting in the ultimate VIP box with not a soul around, Jeremy and I spoke of ambition. We spoke, too, of what a mother is or should be as a son rounds the corner on 21.Two housekeeping notes: I will be signing at the BEA on Thursday, May 27 at 3:30, Table 29. The next day, at the...
May 21, 2010
Where the student shines
Regular readers of this blog took a journey with me last fall as I made my way through my first semester at the University of Pennsylvania—not as a student that time, but as a teacher. This past week has been full of the sweet dividends such teaching can yield (the students return, they inspire, they even get married), and last night I was gifted once again with the chance to read with Miss Kimberly Eisler, who worked through essay, memoir, interview, profile, and literary reportage with me ...
May 20, 2010
Dangerous Neighbors: Unspeakable Happiness
To all of those who have carried me forward, who have believed: Thank you.
The week ahead
I'm headed into the Big Apple today (though not by way of clydesdales, sadly) to talk about the power of the Kelly Writers House program at Penn, to read with Kimberly Eisler, one of my truly talented students, and to witness the indomitable Al Filreis teach a poem (that should be something; hope he doesn't call on me). Two days later, I'll head back down into Philadelphia to see my first Penn student, Moira Moody, say I do to the man she loves. I'm banking on Dr. Filreis showing off some h...
May 19, 2010
The Day's Harvest
(my peonies are in bloom, my irises, too)
Lost Photo
My mother and me, on the occasion of my graduation from the University of Pennsylvania.
