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5 march 2002

new review! healthy, but not disgusting. amazing, eh?

finished the slave, another nobel reading project winner! excellent book, which i highly recommend. good commuting book.

there's also some new lid, from the angels unaware series.

passing the torch

Never underestimate the power of Girls' Night Out.

Last week, a new girlfriend of mine celebrated her birthday, and kindly invited me to the Wednesday-night shindig. I figured it would be a low-key event, with appetizers at her home, then a nice evening of blues with the Burns Sisters at the Garage. As soon as I entered her home, however, I immediately began asking myself, "where have these women BEEN?"

As hard as I try, Winston-Salem is still a town that sometimes defies description. I can go anywhere in this country and rest assured that my home has name recognition. "Oh, yeah, the cigarette town." Occasionally, people will recognize Winston as Krispy Kreme's home. I therefore take my job as ambassador very seriously. After all, we've got a thriving blues heritage, one of the south's best contemporary art museums, and North Carolina's most talented and prolific independent art community.

This year, I've also come to realize that some very cool writing women live here. If you're not familiar with the species, writers are difficult to spot in the wild. We're kind of like puffins--very bright and colorful sorts, but make irregular public appearances, and only when we're good and ready. We are otherwise holed up somewhere, creating something that might thrust us into the public eye for a few months next year.

So there I was Wednesday night, in a room filled with women who write. It was a group of all ages, from 30 to...way past 30, but with young chick energy, a ponytail, and cowboy boots. These were women who were unafraid of language in all its forms, could hold their liquor, and didn't get perms. They were buff.

I'm especially happy to have become acquainted with two of them. Dudley Shearburn is the mother of seven grown children--(single mother, no less), who published a book entitled Get a Good Life, with Emily Wilson. Cheryl gave me a copy, telling me that the writing was similar to that of my own voice. It is a series of vignettes and smart advice from one woman to the rest of us. Dudley on childrearing? She used to have one child who would arise at 4a.m., which was just a hair too unreasonable to begin the breakfast hour. No problem--Dudley would just throw a package of crackers into the bed. It held her daughter until a more civilized time, mostly because it took her so long to open the crackers.

These days, she lives in a colorful downtown loft, and holds what sounds like Winston's most challenging book club there. Oh, and all seven of those kids turned out better than "just fine". They're in charge of stuff, well-traveled, and still visit their mom. If you measure success in the happiness of your kids, she did a good job.

Emily Wilson was also there. She's a poet, and Cheryl had one of her books, too. Among the reviewers of this collection? A.R. Ammons, to start. She's got a reading on Tuesday at Reynolda House. I want to write poetry like she does when I grow up! I want to be like both of them when I grow up--oblivious to the numbers I've accumulated, still fit, still happy, and quick to deflect the "you ought to act this way now" rules, while still being entirely civilized.

It's quite do-able. I saw it with my own eyes.

Last December, I met someone else whom I think you ought to know about. She's Ana Tampanna, author of The Womanly Art of Alligator Wrestling: Inspirational Stories for Outrageous Women Who Survive by Their Wisdom and Wit. From the mundane to the extraordinary, she covers so many moments in the life of being a woman. I'm thorougly enjoying her book, which I read in snippets before bed. Highly recommend.

I think that traveling the world in search of answers is a fine way to spend your time. It's good to accumulate the stories you've heard along the way, as long as you record them, learn from them, and then pass them on to someone else. I've generously indulged my traveling bug, found clues here and there. I've lived in more places than most people have visited. But don't you know I keep finding the answers I need right here, in the first home I chose as an adult.

What's better, women that make me proud to be one keep guiding me along. I know that there are bigger places with more people to tell taller tales. I think the difference between those places and Winston-Salem, is that we take our storytelling seriously. We make time to listen. We believe in porches and long nights. We don't believe so much in generation gaps. I think that's it. Here, the story just never ends.