Volume VI, Issue 29 July 17, 2017 Word of the Week: preserve Dear ,
Greetings
from Acadia National Park in Maine, where last week my husband Richard and I were on Cadillac Mountain, the highest point along the North Atlantic seaboard and the first place to view sunrise in the United States from October 7 through March 6. (We fell outside those dates, but it was still quite the
glorious experience, well worth arising at 3:10 a.m.) Signs urging visitors to preserve our national parks prevail, and I am grateful for the reminders. Such beauty is important to preserve.
Also important to preserve is our collective history. On our way to Acadia, we visited Harriet Beecher Stowe's home in Brunswick, Maine, where she wrote Uncle Tom's Cabin, a book that, as the Harriet Beecher Stowe Center puts it, "had a huge impact on America's conscience by illustrating slavery's affect on families." It was quite an
amazing feeling to stand at the door of this influential writer I first encountered in the pages of the beloved Betsy-Tacy books of my childhood. What's just as important to preserve, I believe, is our own personal and family history. That's why I'm so passionate about teaching memoir, as I'm
doing this summer in the Northeast and will do again in Charlotte in the fall of Thursday mornings. (If you're interested, it looks like we will have a few open spots. Details here.)
Speaking of the importance of personal and family history, and that Charlotte memoir class, I am so thankful right now for one of its members, Nancy Currid, who wrote this past May about her quirky habit of collecting phone books. The very first phone book in her collection was from Erie, PA, my hometown, back in 1959, and she lent it to me for the summer.
What a joy it was to share it with a beloved friend of mine, Janet Windahl, and her husband Ron. Janet was a dear friend of my mother's and father's, and is a treasure trove of stories about them. She has fascinating stories of her own, too. Janet was widowed before I lost my mother in 2002 or, of course, my father seven years later. I visit her every summer. And a few years
ago, she had the best story ever to tell me. She went to her college reunion only because a friend who had recently lost her husband begged her to. And whom should she run into but Ronny Windahl, a "young man" two years older than her to whom she'd once been engaged? Ron was a widower himself, and a whirlwind second romance was followed by a wedding.
Both found their childhood homes listed in the 1959 Erie "and Surrounding Areas" phone book, and Janet also found the Erie address where she lived with her first husband all those years ago. It was so much fun to hear the stories they told! (And it was icing on the cake that Janet gave me a jar of homemade elderberry preserves that clinched the word of the week.)
I, of course, urged them to write them down, as I urge you to write down the stories from your life, or your family. But don't just listen to me. This week's featured WordPlayer, Joan Lafleur, has turned her family stories into a book, and her
beautiful introduction, which you can read below, is a heartfelt, compelling plea to all of us to preserve our family memories.
Here's to preserving, to the best of our abilities, what we cherish...
Upcoming WordPlay
RETREAT AT OLMSTED MANOR
MEMOIR: TELLING THE TIMES OF YOUR LIFE
Our life stories are a precious legacy. Writing them is a gift, not only to ourselves, but to those who love us. They will be treasured for generations to come. Come learn engaging tools and techniques to retrieve and record your adventures, loves, losses,
successes, and more with ease and enjoyment, no matter where you are in the process.
Participants are asked to bring along photos of people, places, or events that are significant to their lives to be used as inspiration for writing.
WHERE: Olmsted Manor. 17 East Main Street.
Ludlow, PA 16333
WHEN: Friday, August 4th – Sunday, August 6th, 2017
COST: $230.00, which includes class, 2 nights stay, and 6 meals
TO REGISTER: To register by phone, call 814-945-6512. You can also register by sending an email to olmstedreservations@gmail.com or online at www.olmstedmanor.org/events.
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THE GIFT OF MEMOIR: WRITING PERSONAL AND FAMILY STORIES
(Preserving Family History; Writing for
and about Your Family; The Art of Memoir) Our life stories are a precious legacy. Putting them in writing is a gift to all who know and love us—they can be treasured and enjoyed for generations to come. It is also a gift to ourselves. As best-selling author Rachel Naomi Remen says in her book Kitchen Table Wisdom, facts bring us to knowledge, but stories bring us to wisdom. If you are interested in writing family and/or personal life stories—those significant tales of adventure, transition,
love, loss, and triumph, as well as lovely everyday moments from times past or the present, come learn specific tools and techniques to retrieve and record them. * For the benefit of participants, an audio recording of the class will be made each week so that participants are able to listen to classes they miss and/or review material covered at any convenient time and place. These recordings are
available throughout the class session, along with all handouts, in a shared Dropbox folder. WHERE: Covenant Presbyterian Recreation Center, 1000 East Morehead Street, Charlotte, 28204. Click here for map.
WHEN: Thursday mornings, 10:00 a.m. – noon. September 7 and 21
October 5, 19 and 26
November 9 and 30
December 14 COST: $275 TO REGISTER: If you’re interested in attending, please email us at info@wordplaynow.com.
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FALL WRITING RETREAT
Renew and delight yourself. The Fall Writing Retreat is an opportunity to create new pieces of writing and/or new possibilities for our lives. Enjoy various seasonal prompts; they elicit beautiful material that can be shaped into essays, poems, stories, or articles. After a
communal lunch, you’ll have private time which can be used to collage, work with a piece of writing from the morning, or play with a number of other writing prompts and methods. You’ll take home new ideas, new drafts, and new possibilities.
$97 includes lunch and supplies.
WHERE: South Charlotte area. Details will be provided upon registration.
WHEN: Saturday, September 23rd, 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.
More WordPlay opportunities here.
WordPlay Success Story
"Maureen, as an editor and mentor, has helped me move forward.
Her love, dedication, and knowledge are an inspiration that I
value very much." In addition to writing, Joan has taught French, English, and English as a Second Language for a total of 30 years at Mars Hill College, Forsyth Country Day, Providence Day, West Charlotte, and South Meck High
School. She retired from teaching in June 2013, and has enjoyed being a tutor at International House, helping immigrants learn English and prepare for the citizenship exam, and also being a writing tutor. What Joan says about WordPlay
“For many years I have played around with writing (poetry and nonfiction mostly), but I never thought of myself as "a writer" until I started taking WordPlay classes. I enjoyed the first class I took with Maureen through the Continuing Education program at Queens University so much, I took an essay class and began to stretch myself even further and gain more skills to help me teach essay writing to my ESL students at South Meck High School.
I began to feel a strong kinship with Maureen and the other writers I met. The third series of classes was at St. John's Baptist Church, where we had a truly special group of writers that shared our heartfelt experiences, our love of writing, and our love for Maureen, who encouraged us all along the way.
I was a part of this writing group for two years. During that time I wrote an essay about an inspiration I had while visiting the local Wal-Mart at Christmas that was included in an anthology called Imagining Heaven. The culmination of this opportunity to be a writer was a chance to read my essay at
the literary festival at CPCC in 2011. Maureen made that thrilling experience possible for me. Now that I have retired from teaching and have more time to devote to being a writer, which has become a "full-blown dream", I have written a book of family stories based on old photographs called Not Without Them: A
Family History of the Carter, Terry, Vining, and Williams Families. I also hope to put together a book of my poetry. Maureen, as an editor and mentor, has helped me move forward. Her love, dedication, and knowledge are an inspiration that I value very much."
Featured Writing The Preface to
Not Without Them: A Family History of the Carter, Terry, Vining, and Williams Families
By
Joan Lafleur
You can fall in love with the people in old photographs, especially if the man in the picture is carrying some cane fishing poles in one hand and a tin can of worms in the other and standing beside
an old black truck with a running board, and if the wheels have spokes and the headlights are perched like sentinels on top of the shiny front fender. Especially if near him there’s a little girl of about four wearing a short, white summer dress and white shoes and a white bow in her curly blonde hair and she is looking into the can of worms—or at the tall man in a straw hat and suspenders with stains and patches on his knees. You can fall in love with a picture like that if beside the truck
there are four or five huge glistening watermelons with three cantaloupes stacked on top, perfectly posed for the photo, and all of this sheltered beneath a great blooming plant with pendulous trumpet-shaped white flowers.
The people in the picture are standing outside, in front of an old barn. The man is my
paternal great-grandfather, Rufus Kirkpatrick Williams. This child is unidentified, but perhaps is his beloved daughter, Lena. A picture like this can bring on sadness when you want so much to know the story—and there’s no one left to tell it. The only option you have is to invent the story. Yours will be a story that could have happened. The story will be one possible solution to the mystery of a great-grandfather’s life on a particular day, and will show for that moment what came before and
after.
In this photo, the shadow of someone’s head appears in the lower right corner. That shadowy photographer knew the story. I have listened to the voice of that shadow—and to all the invisible photographers in the old photos—in hopes of finding clues. Those unknown individuals behind a camera were witnesses to
the moments that—taken together—created the lives that gave me life and history.
The true impetus for this book was the capture of my imagination by a collection of old black and white family photographs dating from the 1890s. The photos were preserved by great-grandparents, grandparents, and parents and left to my
siblings and me. My father used to animate the pictures by telling stories at the dinner table, and my mother also shared details about extended family. Many years later, the old photos once again came to life for me when I realized it might be possible to access entry into the lives of the pictured ancestors. Perhaps I could find out more about who they were and what they bequeathed to me through the alchemy of procreation over several generations.
Simply put, I wanted to know those people in the charming photographs, so about five years ago I embarked on the challenge and began my research. The decision has brought me to a surprisingly rewarding and fulfilling outcome.
I started with the census records and soon stumbled on a treasure trove of articles in archived newspapers from North Carolina and Georgia. Further information came from living family members, and from one person who as a child had known one of my ancestors. Old letters and personal effects including college yearbooks—in my possession and library collections—also provided
prime source material.
Most of the photos were saved by my parents in boxes or bags. One year, while still living at home, I decided to put my father’s collection in an album. The project much pleased him, because he was sentimental about his memories.
The pleasure I noted in him then has surely influenced me in wanting more recently to organize data and photos. I view this project as a kind of second incarnation for some of the ancestors of the Carter, Terry, Vining and Williams families. The details of their existence can now be shared with a progeny they could never have imagined. The attempt of all the writing is to
show love and gratitude for the ancestors’ efforts. They wanted to make something good out of human nature, even as they endured many struggles. I appreciate the fact that they believed in us enough to cross the generations by saving pictures for us.
Throughout the text I have included many unanswered questions
about the lives of these people I have tried to honor. My older son hoped I could answer some of those questions, but I cannot. I offer them with the hope that the reader will consider the choices these people faced, the decisions that influenced how they lived and died, and the legacy they left us. The questions are for the reader to wrestle with and answer, or leave unanswered—part of the mystery that surrounds all lives.
I am a combination of all they left to me: pictures without words, ideas and art without form, hopes without fulfillment, a shape of eyes and nose and forehead, a length of arm and leg, the wave in thick hair, an attitude toward work, the energy to be curious, love of words and learning. The truth is, I cannot be fully formed or known without them—so perhaps it was partly a
selfish goal I pursued in this shaping of the story of their lives. I hope they would be pleased—if they could be here—to sit down with me and marvel at who they were or might have been.
One important note here for my readers: If you have the power to leave written legacies, please do so. Write for future
generations. Keep detailed records with your photographs. The stories of the joys and frustrations of your life can in future be a gift to someone you nurtured, those who carry your genes, and those who will not want you to be forgotten.
Do not leave future generations alone. It is a loss to be “orphaned” by your
ancestors.
Not Without Them: A Family History of the Carter, Terry, Vining, and Williams Families is available for purchase on Amazon, here.
WordPlay Now! Writing
Prompt This is WordPlay—so why not revel in the power and potential of one good word after another? This week, it's
"preserve."
PROMPT:
Write now, right now. Pick out a photo of someone or something that holds a treasured memory. Pick up a pen, set the timer on your phone for ten minutes, and preserve it, in words.
MAUREEN RYAN GRIFFIN, an award-winning poetry and nonfiction writer, is the author of Spinning Words into Gold, a Hands-On Guide to the Craft of Writing, a grief workbook entitled I Will Never Forget You, and three collections of poetry, Ten Thousand Cicadas Can't Be Wrong, This Scatter of Blossoms and When the Leaves Are in the Water. One of her long-held dreams came true in July of 2015 when Garrison Keillor read one of her poems on The Writer's Almanac. She believes, as author Julia Cameron says, "We are meant to midwife dreams for one another."
Maureen also believes that serious "word work" requires serious WordPlay, as play is how we humans best learn—and perform. What she loves best is witnessing all the other dreams that come true for her clients along the way. Language, when used with
intentionality and focus, is, after all, serious fuel for joy. Here's to yours! |
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