Belated Fall Newsletter
It’s not that I’ve forgotten how to Blog, it’s that I’ve have been slowly and somewhat painfully weaning myself from the website care of the wondrous Adam Robinson (Good Book Developers) in order to manage my site on my own. “Time consuming” has taken on a whole new meaning, what with WBJC full time, working on the development of my screenplay, and re-editing my fiction manuscript, but here we go: a website, an imported Blog, and a belated posting of my Fall Newsletter. If you’re on my mailing list, you will already have received it, so please just take this opportunity to look around the site. If you’re not on my mailing list, please subscribe at the bottom of this page.
“One of the extraordinary things about human events is that the unthinkable becomes thinkable”
Lake Chautauqua, NY
If you've ever been to the Chautauqua Institution in Western New York, you'll know that it's a bucolic enclave of open-minded thinking. For nine weeks every summer, people come together on the grounds at Lake Chautauqua to share ideas from arts to politics, from worship to meditation. My week-long series, Synergy of the Arts Across Ages, was during Week Seven in August, from Monday 8th through Friday 12th, and amongst the myriad benefits of being an instructor is that you get a gate pass for the week. I could hardly believe my luck that Week Seven included a talk by Salman Rushdie on that Friday morning.
My first awareness of Salman Rushdie was when I was editing a book program at the SABC in Johannesburg. The Satanic Verses had just been published and I programmed an interview with him by a British broadcaster, which I forward promoted with all eagerness. The morning that the program was due to be aired, the head of the radio station received a phone call threatening to blow up the premises of the SABC in Durban if we broadcast the piece with Rushdie. I was instructed to edit out the interview, which I did with much umbrage about self-censorship. How naive.
“I write to you as we prepare to close the 2022 Summer Assembly and as our community continues to heal from the tragedy of August 12, when Salman Rushdie was attacked on the stage of the Amphitheater, along with Henry Reese, his friend and fellow champion of free speech. Mr. Reese was about to interview Mr. Rushdie about their shared work in creating asylum for writers.”
We know what violation took place at Chautauqua on that Friday morning. We also know how Salman Rushdie has refused to give in to terror over the 30+ years of living under the threat of the fatwā. He has continued to speak out on freedom of speech and to make art. I touch on that—with highlights from the course I was at Chautauqua to present in the first place—in this WBJC article.
Being witness to life events—good or horrific—forces you to take stock, doesn't it? I'm sure you will never forget where you were on 9/11. I find myself questioning my place in this country, in my native country, and in the world. This is not just in light of the attack on Salman Rushie and all the implications of that, but also because I have now lived in my adopted country for a quarter of a century; I landed at Dallas International Airport from South Africa on July 19th, 1997.
Then, along comes a book by a Baltimore-based writer, and it has a South African protagonist who is cast adrift in the world! The third novel by Barbara Bourland is The Force of Such Beauty and I'm immersing myself in the audiobook, which is read with such authenticity by a fellow alumna of the University of Cape Town drama school, Tessa Jubber. You can listen here to myBookNotes interview with Babs, where she talks about her choice to make her central character a South African.
Barbara Bourland being a good sport about balancing on the enormous chair in the WBJC studio
There were eight items on my calendar one the first day of September; one of them being getting this seasonal newsletter out—even though it’s taken time to get it up here. This, if anything, tells me it's the end of summer. I hung on to the last remnants when I went and dipped my toes into the Atlantic Ocean in Lewes, Delaware mid-month, and now I’m trying to face the reality of autumn and the busyness it brings.
Much of it is lovely busyness, though, like A Celebration of Writing and Conversation with poets Hiram Larew and Patti Ross on the back patio of The Ivy Bookshop this past Thursday; Writers Live! when I'll be in conversation with Brendan Slocumb about his debut novel, The Violin Conspiracy, at the Enoch Pratt Library's Wheeler Auditorium on Wednesday, October 26th at 7:00 pm; and a shared reading and conversation with my dear friend, Tony Peake, who will be visiting from England, hosted by Charm City Books (info forthcoming) at Old Major in Pigtown on Tuesday, November 1st, at 6 pm. Please click on the links to find out more and, if you're in the area, it would be lovely to see you at some or all.
Enjoy your autumn/spring, depending on your hemisphere. And please be safe! Life changes in an instant.