Five Things I Read, Saw, and Experienced the First Twelve Days of March
Five Things I Read, Saw, and Experienced the First Twelve Days of March
Did that NY Times article (March 2) “A Twist on Posthumous Baptisms Leaves Jews Miffed at Mormon Rite” with accompanying photos of Anne Frank and Daniel Pearl both smiling make you twitch? If the Mormons try to baptize my deceased relatives, they’d have plenty to say. I can just hear Aunt Yetta.
Brand new on Facebook, I had a lengthy middle-of-the-night chat with my best childhood friend, now living in California. Who knew that what I wrote about how we ate oranges, her mother’s taste in furniture, my first crush, and our walks to school backwards would appear on my “wall?” Fortunately, we signed off before we got to puberty. I’m done with on-line chatting and on-line everything when my technical advisor is asleep.
The Newbery Medal winning young adult novel, DEAD END IN NORVELT by Jack Gantos hit all the right notes with my young adult husband and with me. Zany characters. What a ride. Read it. You’ll thank me.
Up there, too, is the Broadway show Seminar. I loved Alan Rickman before seeing him as Leonard, a writing teacher and writer. The play is about everything: group dynamics and rivalries, approval, power, talent, truths and lies, and sexual game playing. And mostly about our complications and complexities. It made me question a lot. Do writers really need acknowledgment? Don’t we simply need ourselves? Why do we let approval and rejection matter? Don’t real artists create for themselves? And why, with my decades of experience as an instructor, are my fees substantially lower than Leonard’s?
I received an invitation to a Sloan Kettering event in April honoring people who have written about their cancer. Their works will be read by well-known actors. My wonderful student, Mary, with breast cancer and talent, was among those chosen to have her essay read. An essay she began, wrote, revised, and revised some more with my pulverization. The event will be huge. The press will be covering it. Each person is allowed 4 guests. Mary invited her husband, daughter, oncologist and me. I might even buy new shoes. Mary is a reminder of the joy I get from teaching, even at rates that don’t come close to Leonard’s.
