Hi, everybody.
This is supposed to be about the excitement of a book signing t Mr. K's bookstore in Johnson City, Tennessee. It's scheduled for Saturday, September 24, from noon till three. I'm so excited. It's such an honor to be on the shelves with such writers as Wilma Dykeman and Abraham Verghese. Mr. K's is a used book store, with lots of wonderful books I didn't even know about, but there's a local author section, too. If you haven't read Dykeman's The Tall Woman you have missed a treat. The same is true for Mine Own Country by Verghese, a doctor in Johnson City who treated AIDS patients in the 1980s, when we didn't know much about that horrible disease.
I say maybe--
Because I too have a horrible disease--cancer. Let me tell you my story.
I retired in May 2010 from Tennessee Wesleyan College. I am so proud of my years at Wesleyan, having the honor of knowing so many students. Before that I was at Roane State Community College, having been one of the "dirty dozen" who taught that first year in a six room abandoned elementary school building in Harriman, Tennessee. So many freshmen over the years, I did not know there could be so many. I experienced the revolution in the teaching of first year composition, beginning with Myna Shaughnessy's lecture at the 1975 lecture at the MLA convention, the lecture that anticipated her ground breaking book, Errors and Expections.
Sorry, I had to brag a bit. I hope I was as helpful to my English students as she was to hers.
Anyway, in the fall of 2010 I was diagnosed with cancer. Here I am, three years later, still surviving, but for how long?
My husband had a stroke in January 2011, even as I began my first chemo. Suddenly, I was his caregiver.
I'm so grateful for these three years. Flame Dancer was edited as I sat getting chemo treatments. As a character in Laurence Durrell's Alexandrian Quartets says:"We want to be loved for our poems, not ourselves."
I hope to see you in Johnson City on September 14. Maybe.
This is supposed to be about the excitement of a book signing t Mr. K's bookstore in Johnson City, Tennessee. It's scheduled for Saturday, September 24, from noon till three. I'm so excited. It's such an honor to be on the shelves with such writers as Wilma Dykeman and Abraham Verghese. Mr. K's is a used book store, with lots of wonderful books I didn't even know about, but there's a local author section, too. If you haven't read Dykeman's The Tall Woman you have missed a treat. The same is true for Mine Own Country by Verghese, a doctor in Johnson City who treated AIDS patients in the 1980s, when we didn't know much about that horrible disease.
I say maybe--
Because I too have a horrible disease--cancer. Let me tell you my story.
I retired in May 2010 from Tennessee Wesleyan College. I am so proud of my years at Wesleyan, having the honor of knowing so many students. Before that I was at Roane State Community College, having been one of the "dirty dozen" who taught that first year in a six room abandoned elementary school building in Harriman, Tennessee. So many freshmen over the years, I did not know there could be so many. I experienced the revolution in the teaching of first year composition, beginning with Myna Shaughnessy's lecture at the 1975 lecture at the MLA convention, the lecture that anticipated her ground breaking book, Errors and Expections.
Sorry, I had to brag a bit. I hope I was as helpful to my English students as she was to hers.
Anyway, in the fall of 2010 I was diagnosed with cancer. Here I am, three years later, still surviving, but for how long?
My husband had a stroke in January 2011, even as I began my first chemo. Suddenly, I was his caregiver.
I'm so grateful for these three years. Flame Dancer was edited as I sat getting chemo treatments. As a character in Laurence Durrell's Alexandrian Quartets says:"We want to be loved for our poems, not ourselves."
I hope to see you in Johnson City on September 14. Maybe.
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