Writing in Times of Grief - Join our roundtable tomorrow

I'll be participating in a roundtable discussion tomorrow afternoon with my dear friend, Eleanor Vincent. Sponsored by the National Association of Memoir Writers, we'll discuss Writing in Times of Grief. And we'd love for you to join us by listening in and asking questions as well.


In the latest NAMW newsletter, founder and discussion moderator, Linda Joy Myers, wrote:



In preparation for our September 8th Roundtable discussion, I have been busy reading the books by our featured authors for the September Roundtable. Eleanor Vincent wrote Swimming with Maya and Madeline Sharples' memoir is Leaving the Hall Light On. Both books are about their beautiful children, how the death of a child leaves a scar that can't be completely healed. Each mother had to find her own path to become re-engaged with life and the rest of the family, and try to heal from such a heart breaking tragedy.


Eleanor Vincent lost her daughter in a freak accident with a horse. Madeline Sharples' son suffered from Bi-Polar disorder and committed suicide. These brave women are veterans of the journey from utter despair and darkness, telling the story in stark and emotionally riveting prose about how each of them found ways of coping and healing. Each of them has written powerful books that reveal the personalities of their beloved children--their imperfections as well as their sterling unique qualities. The stories and truths revealed are not sugar coated, revealing families as they really are--with conflicting needs, wants, opinions and options. We learn about the deep bonds of love and the impossible moment of discovering the death of their child, and the nightmarish aftermath of that unthinkable moment.


Though the reading is emotional and heart wrenching, both these authors guide us expertly through their lives, their feelings, relationships, and struggles to find some kind of center again--a journey no one wants to take. When someone finds themselves in that terrible moment, they need to find the threads of recovery so they can go on and have relationships with friends, their other children, spouses, and the larger world.


Both Eleanor and Madeline were writers before the events that changed their lives, so they naturally turned to writing attempting to make sense of what happened to them. Each says that writing helped her to cope, helped her to find the way to process the story and to preserve the memory of their children when they were young, when they all assumed many more years were ahead of them. These books are powerful testimonies to the strength of the human spirit and will fill your heart with compassion, a good example of how a memoir can make a difference--these personal survival testimonies of a passage through dark nights of the soul. Please join us for a meaningful and powerful discussion, this Thursday, September 8th, 2011.


Here are the details. Hope to hear you tomorrow.

Event Title: Writing About Times of Grief

Date: Thursday September 8, 2011

Time: 4 PM PDT |5 PM MDT | 6 PM CDT | 7 PM EDT, for about 1 Hour

Cost: FREE FOR EVERYONE

Telephone Conference call-in number:(209) 647-1000

Telephone Conference call-in code: 894400

Below you’ll find the full URL for the event.   Please let your following know about this event by sharing this link with them.

http://www.namw.org/teleseminars/september-8-2011-roundtable-teleconversation-to-focus-on-writing-about-times-of-grief/

And click for more information about Eleanor: www.eleanorvincent.com
eleanorvincent.wordpress.com

A poem from Frankfurt

We visited the Museum of Modern Art in Frankfurt (the National Museum of Art was closed for renovations) and came across this very unusual sculpture by Katharina Fritsch. It haunted me so much I had to write a poem about it. Though you might not be able to tell from the photo, it is huge. All the figures are life size. And if you have any idea about what it means, please post a comment.


http://www.mmk-frankfurt.de/

Katharina Fritsch's Tischgesellschaft (Table Society), 1988  

at the Frankfurt Museum of Modern Art

Sitting in Black and White

Katharina Fritsch sculpted thirty-two men

sitting at a long narrow table

covered with a red and white

print oil-cloth tablecloth

Half of the men sit on one side

half on the other,

each looking exactly alike

dressed in black

shirt, pants, shoes.

Each has black hair,

only their faces and hands

are chalk white.

They sit sort of hunched over

looking their opposite in the eye,

their hands on the table

with fingers turned inward

and slightly spread out.

And if you look

under the table

just beneath the edge of the tablecloth

you’ll see each has his knees together

his feet together

in straight, precise alignment

but not placed

quite close enough

to touch those

of his companion

on the other side.

But, no amount of looking

will tell you what

these men sitting precisely so

are doing there.

Gustav Vigeland in Oslo - you have to be there

While on a cruise about a year ago we stopped in Oslo for all of four hours and it was raining ice water. Still our tour guide insisted we go to Vigeland Park to see sculptures we would never get a chance to see anywhere else. Well, we saw them briefly with rain pouring down our necks, so we couldn't wait to get back on the bus.


While on our recent trip I insisted we go back to see Vigeland's bronze and granite life-size sculptures - 214 sculptures with more than 758 figures standing on 80 acres of public park - open 24 hours everyday of the year and free of charge.


Well our first day in Oslo it rained - seems to be a constant there. But thankfully the clouds cleared up for us on day two - In fact, it even got sunny, and we were able to enjoy this amazing sight. Vigeland modeled every sculpture in the park himself, without the assistance of pupils or other artists,


I also saw a few other Vigeland sculptures around Oslo and in its National Gallery. But the ones in Vigeland park - all nudes depicting the life cycle of birth to death  - are the most impressive. Here are a few photos. 

http://www.visitoslo.com/en/faq-vigeland-park.52113.en.html

Whimsy in Stockholm

I love the whimsy of French sculptor, Niki de Saint Phalle, whose work I first saw in Paris. So it was a great surprise to see her sculptures in front of the Modern Art Museum in Stockholm with the machine-like scuptures of Jean Tinguely. Their exhibit is called Le Paradis Fantastique, and it surely is.


Here are a few examples:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3tXznHsG7I

A few trip highlights

My husband and I just returned from a two-week trip to Frankfurt and Berlin Germany, Stockholm Sweden, and Oslo Norway. I'll post a few trip highlights in the next days. 


By far the most exciting sight we visited was the Jewish Museum in Berlin. 


http://www.jmberlin.de/main/EN/homepage-EN.php


There are absolutely no words to describe how I feel about it -- it is a museum like no other I've ever been - and I've been to a lot of museums. Everything about it reminds of the Jewish suffering throughout the ages. The angles, the voids, the stairways to nowhere, the zigs and zags, the orientation of the windows that provide no sense of the levels or rooms inside, the Garden of Exile on a 12-degree disorienting gradient with Russian willow oak growing on top of the forty-nine concrete pillars to symbolize hope.


Here is what the architect, Daniel Libeskind, said about the project in 1998.

"The official name of the project is 'Jewish Museum' but I have named it 'Between the Lines' because for me it is about two lines of thinking, organization and relationship. One is a straight line, but broken into many fragments, the other is a tortuous line, but continuing indefinitely." 

The museum opened on September 9, 2001.

 Jewish Museum - Aerial View

Outside view

Garden of Exile

An end of August poem

Van Gogh's Starry Night

Star Fishing

Today I want to tell you about variable stars.

They intrigue me because they change.

They change in brightness.

Some repeat cycles with almost clocklike precision

others change irregularly.

Some require only hours or days

to return to their starting brightness.

Others require years to change.

Yet, whether they change imperceptibly or violently

all variable stars change.

The most spectacular variable is the Nova.

It can get up to 200,000 times brighter than the Sun.

But, alas, it is temporary.

It periodically blows off a tiny percent of the Sun’s mass

at speeds up to 600 miles a second

until it loses too much mass to continue.

Whereas Supernovas brighten up to 10 billion times

the Sun’s brightness for a few days

and then fade away forever.

One more thing.

Variable stars change their brightness by pulsating

ever expanding and contracting

like a balloon,

They repeat their brightness cycles

from one day to hundreds of days

and are hundreds of times more luminous

than the Sun.

Well, that’s it.

Now go out into your yard

lean back in your recliner

gaze up into that black starry sky

and see if you can find your own variable star

amidst the 8000 stars visible to the naked eye.

See if you can catch its luminosity.

Surely you can.

Surely you can.

Please join me on September 25 in the race for life

Every 15 minutes, someone loses their life by suicide in the United States. In addition, for every suicide, it is estimated there are 25 suicide attempts.  Many individuals -- maybe even your loved one, friend, neighbor, or colleague -- suffer from severe emotional pain in silence. In that moment when a person in crisis needs someone to listen and respond, Didi Hirsch's Suicide Prevention Center is here to help. In fact, more than 40,000 women, men and young people turned to its 24-hour Crisis Line last year.

Our son Paul's photo will be on the banner this year

You can help save lives by supporting Didi Hirsch's 13th annual Alive & Running 5K Walk/Run for Suicide Prevention. The event will be held on Sunday, September 25, 2011 at La Tijera Parkway in Los Angeles.

More than 1,100 runners, walkers, strollers and friends and volunteers from all over Southern California will join together at Alive & Running to raise awareness and funding for suicide prevention services. Children under 14 have their very own Kiddie 1K.  Proceeds from Alive & Running directly benefit the Suicide Prevention Center, a program of Didi Hirsch Mental Health Services. Founded in 1958, the Suicide Prevention Center was the first program in the U.S. to establish a 24-hour suicide prevention Crisis Line. Now in its 52nd year of saving lives, the Suicide Prevention Center provides support for those who have lost a loved one to suicide; outreach and training to the community; and a Suicide Response Team that works with the Los Angeles Mayor?s Crisis Response team, the coroner?s office and local police and fire departments to provide immediate support at the scene of a suicide.

Your support may make all the difference to a person contemplating taking their life.  

I understand how busy everyone is, and realize that it may not be possible for you to attend.  If this is the case, please consider making a donation. 

Click here to visit my personal page. -- to sign up or donate. (If you sign up be sure to join Team Lelewer.) 

I hope to see you on September 25th!