Eliza Holliday Letterist.com: September 2011

Thursday, September 1, 2011

Kids Making BOOKS!

They brought me back to Martin County again to conduct workshops in several libraries this summer...two in one day! In one branch I had 38 participants, including the moms and dads! Whew! But we ended up having a blast, and the two hour format meant we had time to write stories in our books (even tho some were "dictated" to a parent). And, of course, they were amusing, sweet and heartfelt.
Now I just need to find libraries that will have me give workshops that are closer to home! Because this is what I love to do...

Son Number One did graduate this year! I forced myself to do a formal italic for his announcment, which I worked on last year in the Sheila Water's workshop and invented a border in photoshop with a "snakes and sticks" motif, a reference to his history as a reptile lover and his drum playing...it took a while, but we are proud of his accomplishments!

A Speech to the Garden Club of America

Thank you. I’m glad to know we’re friends, of course;
There are so many outcomes that are worse.
But I must add I’m sorry for getting here
By a sustained explosion through the air,
Burning the world in fact to rise much higher
Than we should go. The world may end in fire
As prophesied—our world! We speak of it
As “fuel” while we burn it in our fit
Of temporary progress, digging up
An antique dark-held luster to corrupt
The present light with smokes and smudges, poison
To outlast time and shatter comprehension.
Burning the world to live in it is wrong,
As wrong as to make war to get along
And be at peace, to falsify the land
By sciences of greed, or by demand
For food that’s fast or cheap to falsify
The body’s health and pleasure—don’t ask why.
But why not play it cool? Why not survive
By Nature’s laws that still keep us alive?
Let us enlighten, then, our earthly burdens
By going back to school, this time in gardens
That burn no hotter than the summer day.
By birth and growth, ripeness, death and decay,
By goods that bind us to all living things,
Life of our life, the garden lives and sings.
The Wheel of Life, delight, the fact of wonder,
Contemporary light, work, sweat, and hunger
Bring food to table, food to cellar shelves.
A creature of the surface, like ourselves,
The garden lives by the immortal Wheel
That turns in place, year after year, to heal
It whole. Unlike our economic pyre<
That draws from ancient rock a fossil fire,
An anti-life of radiance and fume
That burns as power and remains as doom,
The garden delves no deeper than its roots
And lifts no higher than its leaves and fruits.