This bleepin' blog thingy (do I sound like SP?) is driving me nuts! (I was gonna say "friggin'" but looked it up & it says, "a way to say f*cking when your parents are around" so I decided not to use it. Anyway, I responded to Charlie's blog but apparently forgot to press the magic button to record it so it went away. I just finished what I thought was a pretty clever blog on my friend, Eudora, and while trying to figure out how to italicize a book title, I pressed something and "poof"! if vanished. Soooo--I will try again.
Eudora is now tucked safely back in the Accomac Library shelves but is still on my mind, & I wanted to share a few more comments. One of her quotes regarding writing was, "Every feeling waits upon its gesture." I find this rather difficult w/ regard to our current assignment which does not allow our using stage directions; thus, we must empower our characters solely through their use of words. Not easy for me. One of Welty's short stories, Robber Bridegroom, was made into a play, but SHE did not have to worry about not using stage directions.
Another of her observations was that the frame "through which I view the world has changed with time." Oh how true. When I read some of my writings of long ago I am amused and sometimes bewildered at some of it. She also says writing is a way to discover sequence--i.e., cause and effect, and that meanings are discovered through retrospect--threads to memory.
My son-in-law spent a summer acting in Jackson, MS, and was fortunate enough to meet Ms. Welty in the home where she lived when she was born and when she died (now a museum). After keeping him and others in the cast waiting for about thirty minutes, she appeared and announced in her syrupy southern drawl, "I hope you'll forgive my slow pokery." He thought that was very funny. She was in her eighties at the time.
Interestingly, I just finished a book (The Help--forget the italics!) which was set in Jackson, MS. The author's descriptions about the South were similar to Eudora's.
And now, Dear Hearts, I'm going to press the magic button and hope this cotton-pickin' thing flies.
This cotton pickin' thing indeed has flown! Thanks for a charming post, Betty. I want to cringe, actually, when I see some of the things I wrote in my youth. I was so sanctimonious and judgmental. I never thought I was like that, but apparently I was. So I wholeheartedly agree that the frame through which we see the world changes through time. And I say thankfully so!
ReplyDeleteCorrection! Not that it makes a big difference to anybody but me (I'm OC), I discovered that I have misinformed you regarding Eudora Welty's home. I just discovered a page I tore out of a Southern Living magazine a while back w/ a picture of her home, and it was built in 1925, the year she graduated from high school. Sooooo--she was NOT born in that house! Sorry for passing along wrong information.
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