Volume VI, Issue 30 July 24, 2017 Dear ,
The words "some pig" are your verbal clue to this week's "Where in the world
is Maureen Ryan Griffin?" photo. Did you guess E.B. White's farmhouse?
If so, this makes you a bona fide E.B. White fan, like me, or at least a Charlotte's Web fan.
This beautiful farmhouse on Maine State Route 175 in northern Brooklin, Maine, is where E.B. wrote his classic children's story, Charlotte's Web, which was inspired by the death of an actual pig, and a real spider. I learned this from an article called Ten Things You Might Not Know About Charlotte's Web, and indeed I didn't. The best thing I learned from it was that that E.B. himself did an audio recording of Charlotte's Web. Wow, how great is that? You can listen to it here. I stumbled across Ten Things You Might Not Know About Charlotte's Web and "Death of a Pig," the essay E.B. wrote about the real pig he lost, online after stumbling across a small article in a Maine travel magazine that mentioned famous writers from Maine. By a stroke of wonderful serendipity, two dear friends of mine, Dede Mitchell and Vivé Griffith, happened to be in Maine the same time Richard and I were, and it just so happened that they were staying in Blue Hill, Maine, only a few miles from E. B. White's farmhouse. E.B. White was a very reclusive man who discouraged visitors by reporting that he lived in "a New England coastal town, somewhere between Nova Scotia and Cuba," and the
people who now live in his farmhouse have a very large "no trespassing" sign on their property. And there is no place to park anywhere nearby. In fact, I'd read online that a police car had stopped another intrepid writer who wanted to explore E.B. White's property and told him no roadside parking was allowed. Vivé, Dede, and I decided on a course of action: a quick drop-off for me to take a selfie.
Later, my ever-patient husband Richard took this picture of the three of us when we all went
out to dinner in Southwest Harbor. Vivé, our historian, (center) had figured out that this summer is our 25th anniversary of being friends. (We met at one of Irene Honeycutt's legendary mountain writing retreats. Lucky us!) Here's to "some" great friendship over the years!
I hope you enjoy this week's featured writing and prompt that arose from our serendipitous Maine encounter, and that you are creating "some" great memories of your own this
summer.
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. Quote and picture from QuotesPictures.net an excerpt from by E. B.
White I spent
several days and nights in mid-September with an ailing pig and I feel driven to account for this stretch of time, more particularly since the pig died at last, and I lived, and things might easily have gone the other way round and none left to do the accounting. Even now, so close to the event, I cannot recall the hours sharply and am not ready to say whether death came on the third night or the fourth night. This uncertainty afflicts me with a sense of personal deterioration; if I were in
decent health I would know how many nights I had sat up with a pig.
The scheme of buying a spring pig in blossom time, feeding it through summer and fall, and butchering it when the solid cold weather arrives, is a familiar scheme to me and follows an antique pattern. It is a tragedy enacted on most farms with perfect fidelity to the original script. The murder, being premeditated, is in the first degree but is quick and skillful, and the smoked bacon and ham provide a ceremonial ending
whose fitness is seldom questioned.
Once in a while something slips - one of the actors goes up in his lines and the whole performance stumbles and halts. My pig simply failed to show up for a meal. The alarm spread rapidly. The classic outline of the tragedy was lost. I found myself cast suddenly in the role of pig's friend and physician - a farcical character with an enema bag for a prop. I had a presentiment, the very first afternoon, that the play would never regain its balance and
that my sympathies were now wholly with the pig. This was slapstick - the sort of dramatic treatment which instantly appealed to my old dachshund, Fred, who joined the vigil, held the bag, and, when all was over, presided at the interment. When we slid the body into the grave, we both wore shaken to the core. The loss we felt was not the loss of ham but the loss of pig. He had evidently become precious to me, not that he represented a distant nourishment in a hungry time, but that he had
suffered in a suffering world. But I'm running ahead of my story and shall have to go back.
from E. B. White's "Death of a Pig," published in The Atlantic
in January, 1948. Read it in its entirety 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
"some."
PROMPT: What person, place, or thing is "some" something special the way E.B. White is to me, and the way Wilbur is "some pig" to Charlotte?
Set a timer for five minutes and make a list of standout people, places, and/or things. (If you're an animal lover, try a list of animals that have been special to you.)
Pick one person, place, thing, or animal off your list. Se t a timer for ten minutes and write, keeping your pen in motion the entire
time.
Then, read over what you wrote. Can your writing be turned into a story, essay, or poem?
If so, great! You've created a first draft. Keep going. If not, you've set your subconscious into
motion, and generated some writing ideas that can germinate.
A bonus research prompt: What writer is, to you, "some writer"? Do some research of your own to see if you can discover what inspired him or her to write a book, essay, story, or poem that you
love.
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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