Beth Kephart's Blog, page 344

Time Exposure

We drove through storm and upticking fog and lights that could barely find their way, and sometimes it was only the rain we could hear, and sometimes only the songs. We make songs to mean what we need them to mean. Last night, every song was for me.

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

Think what you must, but the book that has been with me of late—the one I just finally finished reading an hour or so ago while I waited for the boys to rise—has been the Ken Kesey classic, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. It was on the high school summer reading table at the local book store, and of course I'd seen the movie, but I should have long ago read the book.

I had anticipated the intensity of the story itself—the horrible inevitability that awaits Randle Patrick McMurphy, the red-heade

Holding on to the Just Then

We climbed to the top of Russian Hill, and for a moment, everything was ours.

Empty Nesting

We gave the largest room in this tiny house to our son, but it was never big enough. He was a keeper of all things, always. Favorite hats and books and every paper from every grade that reminded him of something happy. He'd stack his pennies high on top of books, and beneath the books he'd keep the magazines from years ago, and inside the magazines were notes he'd taken while watching world cup soccer.

I am a devoted minimalist, seeker of clean and open space, and I gave birth to a guy like th

Appreciation: Richard Avedon and Robert Frank at SFMOMA

Every time I'm in San Francisco I go several blocks down the street from the Hotel Rex, where I stay, and see what might be showing at SFMOMA.

This time, I got very lucky, for entire wings had been given over to both Robert Frank and Richard Avedon, photographers whose work has so very much to teach. The Frank exhibition presented, among other things, 83 photographs taken in America during 1955 and 1956—a time of diners, jukeboxes, intense racism, Hollywood, iconic barber shops, and road trips.

What Holly Sees

I asked Holly, who is an extraordinarily gifted photographer, to tell me what she sees when she sees a picture—what she looks for through the camera's eye.

"The simple things," she said.

A Starred Review for Nothing but Ghosts

The boy leaned forward to prepare himself for the quick dash across the plaza. Leaned forward, spread his wings. He was surprised by his own speed. He laughed. He never thought he'd get so far.

Yesterday I was in my post-vacation panic—piled high with work, looking ahead with consternation—when an e-mail slipped in from Ruta Rimas, my new editor at HarperTeen. There had been a starred review of Nothing but Ghosts from the Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books, she wrote, an especially b

Jewels in the Square

We'd walked all morning, up and down hills, until at last we returned to Union Square, just to sit. But there is always something alive and happening in that seat-terraced place, and that day it was Jewels on the Square, a performance of Latin Jazz by high school kids who had salsa in their blood. So the sun streamed down and the artists cycled through their songs, their instruments, and mostly I sat facing the crowd, watching the faces of the mothers, friends, neighbors, strangers who had gat

Time to Fly

But oh, it has been fine.

Here's a lesson that I've learned this summer: When you are on vacation, be on vacation. Leave the work (truly, absolutely) behind. This is the first year that I've ever done this. Real life, as I was saying to Holly yesterday, trumps all.

Holly and Me in the Winds of San Francisco

You didn't think you would leave San Francisco without seeing me, she said, and afterward I thought how impossible that would have been. Not seeing this brilliant writer and photographer and fearless adventurer, not braving the wind with her. We could have had tea, or hot chocolate, or something sweet. She chose, instead, to invite me into the Grace Cathedral, high on the hill, where the voices of four cantors filled the stone hollow, and where there were candles to be lit, for those we loved