Brash and outspoken, traditional and gorgeous, if you love great art, North Carolina is happiness. This and this post introduced how much I love the North Carolina Museum of Art. That was in only one of their two buildings…
A second one houses a collection that dates as far back as Egyptian mummies…
Woman in the middle ancient Roman art at North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh
… and as recent as works by the artists commissioned to paint official portraits of former U.S. President Barack Obama and former First Lady Michelle Obama…
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What a great time my husband and I had visiting our dear friend David Hunt in North Carolina. He’s posted on Happiness Between Tails here and here. We hadn’t seen him in way too long — all the more reason that my recent discovery of the touching PBS series, “We’ll Meet Again,” gets me blubbering.
What did we expect of North Carolina? Who knows, but it wasn’t an abundance of terrific art museums!
Horse’s Skull with Pink Rose, 1931 by Georgia O’Keeffe (1887-1986)
Let’s start with the North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh. We loved it so much that we visited it three times! No, was it four? If it wasn’t, it should’ve been! ( ! ! These ! ! aren’t ! ! understatements ! ! )
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Great art, impressive art, and terrific art! That — though foremost the wonderfulness of spending time with our dear friend in North Carolina — defines the marvelous visit that my husband and I had. In this post, I explained how we had the good fortune to catch an exhibition at the North Carolina Museum of Art that featured work by the enormously influential American artist, Georgia O’Keeffe. (And here I tell about another wing of the museum.) In addition to her art, the show featured works inspired by O’Keeffe…
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Books allow me to transcend my own experience of the world. In reading, I can assume the skin of people, places, times, and events that I’ll never otherwise inhabit. They make me feel more part of the world and more human.
How has reading shaped you? Blogger/teacher/parent Pernille Ripp why she believes children should be exposed to all kinds of books…
I get asked for a lot of book recommendations, I think it comes with the territory when you share the love of books. And while I love pairing books with potential readers, I have also noticed a pattern that causes me to pause, that should cause all of us to pause.
I get asked for a lot of books featuring male lead characters for male readers.
When I ask why the need for a male lead, I am often told that “they” just don’t think a boy will read a “girl book.” That a boy will not like a book about feelings. That a boy only wants books that have action. That have other boys in it. That feature characters that look just like them or at the very least think like them.
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Do you have an elevator speech? Book writers are told that they need an ‘elevator speech’ — a one-minute pitch for when they inadvertently meet their star-maker. It’s also useful for talking about one’s book with everyone else.
Theoretically, that is. My elevator speech rarely gets past the first floor.
But I love my books, which is why I keep at them. My two novels are in the final edit phase as I build an audience of followers (that means you, dear reader) who I hope will be interested in them when they’re self-published. They’re narrated by a 40-year-old woman, in the form of letters to a deceased grandmother.
The Hope Part of this Post: This video reminds me of me pitching my book — and Maria Keogh Semple’s “Where’d You Go, Bernadette” did great!
Here’s part 2 of her pitching (this time to another very successful author), which is also shown comically yet realistically…
Semple’s book is so successful that Cate Blanchette is starring in a movie version of it!
What’s been people’s reaction when you tell them about your books?
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Truman Capote was a genius writer and spoken word performer. He’s best known for “Breakfast at Tiffany’s.” Yes, the movie version that starred the lovely Audrey Hepburn but that horribly mangled Capote’s marvelous novella.
Here Capote reads aloud his heartbreakingly sweet and profound autobiographical “A Christmas Memory”…
Here, along with his “Among the Paths to Eden,” is him reading the real version of “Breakfast at Tiffany’s”…
Have you read any of Truman Capote’s stories?
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“Flamenco & the Sitting Cat” is the title of the first of my soon-to-be self-published novels. The ‘Sitting Cat’ part of the title refers to the geographical shape of Iran…
Map of Iran outlined in the shape of a Sitting Cat.
I grew up with only classical music — and flamenco music and dance. My father, who left Barcelona in his mid-20s, wanted it that way. Since I left home at 18, it’s a gift to watch any type of dance I like and to listen to every kind of music that comes my way.
Shahrokh Moshkin Ghalam respectfully and lovingly fuses dance cultures.
I still love classical — and flamenco! Especially fascinating to me is when flamenco is fused with the dance of Iran, where my husband was raised. Shahrokh Moshkin Ghalam is an Iranian dancer now residing in France. Flamenco is as much about individuality as it is about technique — it accommodates all cultures, all forms of beauty.
If only politics were as intent on creating a climate of ‘we’ rather than an ‘us vs. them’!
For more flamenco, check out Part 3: Marvelous Madrid — Flamenco
What fusion art do you enjoy?
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