Autumn Treats

--The Nobel Prize for Literature will be announced this morning, maybe while I'm writing this blog post.  Every year, I hold out hope for Margaret Atwood, whose breadth, depth, and incredible range amaze me.  Almost every year, a writer I've never heard of is announced.  Some of them, like Wislawa Szymborska, become my favorites.  But honestly, life is short, and many Nobel Laureates will not be read by me.  And from what I can tell, most of them don't have the talent of Atwood; certainly they do not have the range, the skill across multiple genres.  But I am biased.

--I am back to working on my memoir. That feels really good. 

--Yesterday, I spent part of the morning weaving together several Valentine's blog posts into a cohesive, coherent essay for the memoir.  And then, my spouse was quite grumpy because of home repairs.  I was tempted to go to work early and leave him to stew in his unpleasant juices.  But I remembered my very own words that I'd been weaving, and I forgave him and helped with the home repair project.  I wrote more extensively about this encounter in today's post on my theology blog, a blog post which ends with a love note for the ages preserved in concrete.

--I was talking to my artist/librarian friend about my memoir, and she asked if I was also coming at the subject matter from a woman's perspective.  I felt a brief stab of accusation from my younger self.  While I am coming at it from a female perspective, in that I am a female, I feel that I have less of those issues than other women.

--I feel that way because I have no children.  At the women's retreat I attended recently, I was the only woman with no children except for the few 18-20 year olds who were there.  While we have all wrestled with issues of having enough time and division of chores both on the job and at home, I have less of those struggles because I don't have demands that children bring.

--Still, it was a good reminder to be on the lookout for ways to bring the feminist issues to the fore.

--I need to get more poetry writing back into my days.  I found a scrap of paper in the car.  I had jotted poetry lines on it several weeks ago, but I'd done nothing more.  I'd like to get back to writing a poem a week.

--Breaking news:  the Nobel goes to Alice Munro.  Not the Canadian female writer for whom I was rooting.  But I do love Alice Munro too.  I'm happy at any time a female writer wins these prizes.

--My admittedly biased self feels that Margaret Atwood has a wider range of skills than Alice Munro.  But my happy writer self feels that no one has more skill with the short story than Munro.  And she has done so much to depict the lives of girls and women, to use a title of one of her books.

--I love that a short story writer has won the Nobel.  I can read a story of hers today for a treat without a huge time commitment.  She writes in my language; I don't have to wait for a translation.  She is part of a pantheon of writers who have been very important to me as a writer, especially as a female writer.  Hurrah!

--Other treats:  I have gingerbread baking in the oven.  It's perfuming the house with the scent of autumn.  I bought a bag of apples yesterday.  And this week-end I will help with the pumpkin offload at my church, and then I'll buy some pumpkins.  We'll see how long they last in this heat.