Laundry Line Divine

My head is spinning from this week of the Berkshire Festival of Women Writers. When I first contemplated the events I wanted to attend back in February when I got hold of the booklet, I did not imagine the amount of inspiration I would take in every week. I have been on a diet of elevated inspiration delivered by the Festival and all the women participating for this entire month.

It is a blur.
My writing journal is full of quotes.

In an effort to share this week of wonderment with you, I will offer you a few photos with accompanying thoughts. And, a preview of the week ahead.

Sunday, March 18. Saw 2 Movies. Sarabah and Granito: How To Nail a Dictator.
I met Pamela Yates, director of Granito. She said, “When the hand of destiny touches you, you have to act.” and Ricky Bernstein of the Berkshire Human Rights Speaker Series said of the Festival and these two movies, “we begin to see the immense scope of contribution women make every day”.

Tuesday March 20 I was at IWOWWOW (in words, out words, women’s own words) an evening of live spoken words at Deb Koffman’s studio in Housatonic. 20 women shared for five minutes each- poems, songs, stories and one report from a naturalist. It was an evening of high energy; the full house applauded all 20 women warmly. I read a segment of Laundry Line Divine: A Wild Soul Book for Mothers. The evening was full of lush descriptions of love, loss and living, rich with phrases like Pooja Karina’s “ love is something that must be spent, a currency that is liquid in your hands” and Caroline Forsman’s “an intimate intense purpose” (describing a trip to her dentist).

I took off Wednesday and Thursday. Life at home beckoned. Then Friday, JNB and I attended “A Woman’s Work” at the Unicorn Theatre. It was an evening of women’s stories and excerpts from 3 plays. We were completely taken by Lisa and Fran Mandeville’s music. Listen to them sing ‘Little Bird’ here.

Then Saturday, I trekked up to North Adams for a day of ‘exploratory letterpress’ with Melanie Mowinski. I have worked with Melanie before and had a vision to create a piece of art to commemorate ‘Out of the Mouths of Babes’ to use as a give-away for this week’s drawing. (which you can register for my subscribing to this website) Here is Melanie.
I had a blast. Letterpress is an antique art being revived by printer makers and mixed media artists. PRESS is a public art installation, which offers workshops, classes and exhibitions of area letterpress artwork and visiting shows.

Plus, while I was in North Adams, I visited Gallery 51 to see The Mother Tree by Helen Heiburt. The show was curated by Melanie and features the artwork of three paper artists. Follow the link if you would like to learn more. Let it rest here with these words, there are an abundance of ways for women to describe their journeys as mothers and I am thrilled every time I witness one. Absolutely thrilled.

Which brings me to this week.

You can see my dear Michelle Gillett’s poem set in letterpress type at PRESS’ new show that opens this Thursday. Two of the pieces I created will be in the show too.
Michelle, who graced our March 2 event with her words and perspective as the mother of 2 adult daughters, is a poet who inspires readers of all ages. One of my favorite frames of ‘Out of the Mouths of Babes: An Evening of Mothers Reading to Others’ was Michelle’s thoughtful responses to audience questions. She is a great listener. Michelle and I were guests on Radio2Women earlier that week and I loved talking on the air with Michelle who beamed the whole time like a lighthouse of joy.
And, I also love working out with Michelle, but that is another story.

Michelle Gillett and Gina Hyams by Christina Rahr Lane

Also this week, Hester Velmans is appearing in a talk about self-publishing. Hester is a Berkshire author whose experience as an author, mother and daughter of an author are captured perfectly in this interview with Serene Mastriani and Susie Weekes on Radio2Women. Hester’s blog post is here as part of the ‘Out of the Mouths of Babes’ series.

Is your head spinning now too?
The only thing I can offer you is to snuggle up with a copy of Alana’s cookbook and dream about making your own potato chips. You can register to win a signed copy of this beautiful new book by subscribing to the Laundry Line. Other gifts to be won are two limited edition letterpress prints of my commemorative art created at PRESS. Or five of you could win the brownie recipe by Janet Reich Elsbach and a souvenir program from our March 2 event.

Okay. I am going to get a cool compress and lay down for a while. All this inspiration is making me dizzy.

Thanks for being here.
If you like please:
Read Hester.
Listen to Lisa.
Visit Melanie.
Register for the drawing, which will take place next Saturday, March 31.

Nightnight.
Love,
S

PS This week you can expect guest blog posts from this outstanding line-up of mother/authors.

Kathy Drue
Susan Hajec
Leah Strimbeck
Linda Wisneiwski
Sharon Pywell
Ali Smith

The road between friends is never long.

The road between the stories friends tell is a ‘golden pathway’ as my friend James Lawrence writes here. Jimmy and his wife, my Moon Sister, Tomma traveled not very far, but far enough to join us for ‘Out of the Mouths of Babes’ a week ago Friday.

Here is what he said:

A good story is a golden pathway. It takes you places you would likely never go on your own. It lets you pull on another’s skin and walk around in it for awhile, breathe life in with it, see the world through a different gamut of colors.
Good stories touch the deepest, hidden chambers of your heart, those secret places you forgot you still lived in, and they make you want to occupy those places again, and more fully.
Sitting in the audience the other night at the Out of the Mouths of Babes reading at Simon’s Rock took me and my wife Tomma on some amazing journeys into those neglected pockets of love, loss, hope and pain, discovery, redemption: the evening was absolutely and completely compelling, beautiful and inspirational!
I heard the echoes of my own conscious, deliberate, joy/pain-full fatherhood of raising my two wonderful girls, in the brave, touching, funny, authentic pieces read by the authors. I felt again my own womanly/manly love for my children that burned so fiercely in those years and which has never left me. It made me want to be more brave in my own writing. This is the courage of women, the true courage all of us can rise to: the courage to be our full and authentic selves, and I admired it so in every phrase, every turn of the stories the women read to us.
The readings and the many bright, engaged faces there also brought me back to a sense I have had for much of my adult life that the company of women can so easily be an inspiring, exciting, ultimately transformative place to go, no matter what our sex. It brought smiles, tears and a return to a sense of creative home that I’ve been missing for so long, and renewed my appetite for more.
I love the feminine heart and energy! We need it so. It may yet save our human world, one soul at a time. Thank you!

It is thrilling to sense what Jimmy received as an audience member. In any expression of art that is given to the world, your audience gives you, the artist, gifts. With lifted faces they watch you closely, that golden pathway illumined from both ends, from giving and receiving. This constitutes the interchange of energy between performers and an audience no matter the medium nor the complexity of the offering.

Sandy Mattucci and I met at last summer’s International Women’s Writing Guild conference at Yale. She attended ‘Out’ with her friend, Alberta and so generously offered this:

Delighted’ in being ‘present ‘ at the Festival of Women Writers at Simon’s Rock College of Bard. The muse stirred in me listening to the gift ‘mothers’ had to share. It awakened in this single woman again & again…not able to birth yet birthing the creative child within only now through my soulful artistry and the breaking open of the Divine story that dwells in ‘all’ of us. Blessings, 
Sandy
“Thank YOU Suzi…U R gift”

Sandy came to our event from Connecticut, via Albany NY, bearing gifts. She and her creative partner Edwina Gately have written a book published by Orbis Books, titled
Mothers, Sisters, Daughters Standing on Their Shoulders. This book captures the stories of women in history like Hildegard of Bingen to Wangari Muta Maathai and includes poetic prayers or invocations in the voice of the Divine, for each woman captured by Sandy’s pencil drawings of each one. Joyful, prayful, and reverent- these stories engage at the level of each woman’s passion.

Sandy offered one of her books as a gift for our drawing. And, in the perfection of chance, Steph Campbell, our chanteuse for the evening, won that book.

Steph Campbell joins Jimmy and Sandy in this favorite frame because of joy. These three friends of mine show up for me with a readiness to play that only makes me smile to think of it now. When I told Steph about ‘Out of the Mouths of Babes’ the first thing out of her mouth was an offer to sing. And despite weathering the sad loss of her dear mother just a few weeks ago, Steph held to her offer and gave us a lullaby to her son Jonah and another of her beautiful songs. She is ‘amazing grace’.

What we offer each other, friends or not, is our attention. I am intrigued by Jimmy’s phrase ‘the golden pathway’ because of the invitation to journey together. I often think of my creativity as being accessed by a portal, but through that portal is the pathway.

In their generous offerings of songs, books and comments, my friends remind me that in giving my work to the world I am not alone. We have each given and each received.

I must introduce you now to my friend Lori Landau. She is our next featured blog author in the ‘Out of the Mouths of Babes’ blog series on mothering and creativity.
Lori and I met on Face book and find each other at odd hours, sharing the same things or sending photos to each other that remind one of the other and lo, this new friendship strengthens along this golden pathway we tred together, as we share mail art, stories, photographs and now, blog posts. Here she says,

I believe that the reason we all connect to the arts is because we yearn to merge, that we’re attracted to universal soul, that when we are touched by another’s self-expression it makes us feel connected to something larger than our own self-perceived ordinariness.

Lori and I have discovered a common ground that began on the internet, but, as we have entered the ‘golden pathway’ of sharing our stories and art, we find ourselves looking out at the world from our similar red chairs- where we daily sit to write and meditate. We have sons of similar ages. We yoginis. We look at the world from inversions in hopes to shift our stuck places through gravity and insight. I love Lori’s post today. Her illustrations are there too. Dig in to this new ‘Out’ post and see the wonders of a mother’s inner life revealed through her art.

mail art from Lori to me

It is a fine day for laundry today, sunny and dry.
And, a fine day to cross the portal to the ‘golden pathway’.
Thank you for walking with me.
Love,
S

It is my extreme good fortune to have good friends in my life.
All of them are talented, in some way, whether whacky or normal, they each bear gifts.
In fact, I believe this is true of all people.
We each bear gifts.

Last Friday evening at our premiere of ‘Out of the Mouths of Babes: An Evening of Mothers Reading to Others’, 6 women authors, one singer, two filmmakers, one photographer, one festival coordinator, five visual artists and one bookseller, Matt, who raised his children as the mother and father- all of them, stepped ‘OUT’ with me. We shared our impressions of this journey of parenthood and creativity.

And the gifts were bounteous.

Today’s Favorite Frame is Alana Chernila.

Alana has been the sunny face on the other side of the arugula at my CSA’s farm stand for a few years now. I knew she was up to something when her gorgeous blog spot got fancier and her writing began to coalesce. It has grown beyond a blog in to a beautiful new cookbook called
The Handmade Pantry: 101 Foods You Can Stop Buying and Start Making. Alana’s reading on Friday night was original and fresh and buttery…you wanted to eat up her thoughts- the distinct tang of ferocious motherhood blended sweetly with the creamy rich stand she takes a contemporary woman.

Another gift here on the Laundry Line, is a new blog post on the ‘Out of the Mouths of Babes’ blog series on mothering and creativity. Monica Devine, a writer from Eagle River, Alaska offers a gorgeous piece of writing about her mother and food, which you can read here.

Tomorrow, in honor of International Women’s Day, I will announce the winners of a drawing we held last Friday. Members of our audience put their names in a laundry basket to register. Stop in here to celebrate. I have 3 other books in the drawing- 2 by Gina Hyams, another ‘OUT’ author who you will learn about tomorrow. And the third by my International Women’s Writing Guild friend Sandy Mattucci. More on her, this Friday.

I will hold one more drawing towards the end of March, here on the Laundry Line. Subscribers to this site will be entered in to the drawing. You can subscribe up there in the right hand corner of this website. Existing subscribers are automatically entered to win.

Then, you too, can be making your own graham crackers like we had last Friday night.

Each bearing gifts.
I look forward to handing some out tomorrow!

Love, S

Jennifer Browdy, founder of The Berkshire Festival of Women Writers

I’d love to hear your comments here, of the event, if you were there at Blodgett House, or of this BlogTalk radio show.
I feed on feedback when I am digesting a big piece of work being birthed in the world.
Love, S