Brattleboro Literary Festival

This is the weekend of the Brattleboro Literary Festival. Yesterday we sang at a funeral and then a graveside service which took up all morning and half the afternoon, so we missed pretty much all the events Saturday. Today, Ellen got to hear Anne Fadiman, daughter of Clifton Fadiman, who was a radio celebrity of the mid-20th century, talk about a memoir about her father. Now we are at a venue called  "118 Elliot" which used to be a laundromat (!) waiting for two novelists to appear.

Waiting at 118 Elliot

We went to church in Guilford this morning, a wonderful service in which one of our senior members, Al Franklin, 83 years old, testified as to "Why I Am Alive," despite multiple injuries, disabilities and illnesses. I got to read scripture: a passage from Job and a "contemporary" reading ( a regular feature of our service), which this morning was Rudyard Kipling's poem, "If." A very apt poem for our time!

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too:
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream- -and not make dreams your master;
If you can think- -and not make thoughts your aim,
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same:.
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build'em up with worn-out tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings,
And never breathe a word about your loss:
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: 'Hold on! '

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings- -nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much:
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And- -which is more- -you'll be a Man, my son! 

Al's text from Job was
Shall we accept good from God, and not trouble?""

Ah, Anne Christensen has arrived, author of the novel Last Cruise.

      Anne Christensen, reading