Talk, reading, and book signing at Harwood Art Center Albuquerque, New Mexico July 16, 2006 2-3 p.m. “Show Me the Way to Go Home” (song) Show me the way to go home. I’m tired and I want to go to bed (hum) Wherever I may roam—o’er land or sea or foam— You will always hear…
Selections from Sightlines: A Poet’s Diary by Janet Grace Riehl www.sightlinesbook.com Second Reading Bookstore Alton, Illinois April 15, 2006 1-3 p.m. The other day my father recalled the first time he’d heard the phrase “extended family.” We visited Makalamabedi—the place where the two rivers meet. This was the village in Botswana where I’d lived for…
SPECIAL EVENTS AT HAYNER Hayner Branch Library Events (OASIS Alton Center, Alton Square Mall) “Memories: Each Day Radiant with New Meaning” August 16, 2006 reading, talk, and workshop Janet Grace Riehl, author Sightlines: A Poet’s Diary 1 p.m. –Talk and Poetry Reading 2-4 p.m. Workshop: “Writing Memories” Memories—and our choices in how we live with…
MEMENTO MORI Remember the Moment of Death to Remember the Moment of Life This talk has been given three times in 2006, 2007, 2008: 1) Unitarian Universalist Service, June 4, 2006 Lakeport Yacht Club Lakeport Marina, near Gazebo Park Lakeport, California 2) First Unitarian Church, September 2, 2007 Alton, Illinois 3) Universalist Unitarian Church of…
Poet Laureate of Lake County Reading One of three finalists April 1, 2006 Lakeport, California I am honored to be here today, with such good friends, and such fine writers, on this glorious day of celebrating the sacred vessel of poetry, colleagueship, and our beautiful, wet county. Tomorrow I travel to my ancestral home in…
Watershed Books 305 N. Main St. Lakeport, California June 2, 2006 Friday 3-5 p.m. Listen to this phrase with your poet’s ears: “Clean up your room.” Memories come up, no? Since we are in Northern California, metaphysical correspondences come up too, no doubt. What is cleaning? Which room? The room of our house? Of our…
Winter Passing, now out on DVD, is visually beautiful with skillful acting and slow-paced story telling. the lives portrayed are barren as a winter landscape, rife with drug and alcohol abuse, casual sex, self-injury, suicide attempted and suicide succeeded…in their attempts to block out lonliness and disappointment. These lives are groping towards meaning and find…
A friend put Places of the Heart: Poets on Place into my hands as I worked on preparing a talk on the influence of place in my own poetry. I found Poets on Place so invaluable that I typed many pages of detailed notes to ruminate on. It’s an attractive work replete with complementary elements…
What You Owe Me by Bebe Moore Campbell, available in both audiocasette and book format. Hours of juicy listening to a story of epic proportions following the effects through three generations of the sins of the mothers, fathers, and society before them. Sometimes banal, but more often engrossing, What You Owe Me gives us a…
Anton Chekhov’s The Seagull, available as a DVD from the Broadway Theatre Archive, heavy on symbolism and thwarted love in Bohemian rural Russia some time ago…why should we care? Because the play shows so clearly so many ways that human beings fail themselves and others…so many ways love is leaned on, and then expires…from abuse,…