Blog Archive

Read all about it on Melanie Mowinski’s blog, and see below for some great pictures of the process, taken by Suzi Banks Baum of Laundry Line Divine, who hosted the Mothering & Creativity Festival session at the beginning of March, and is one of our most active Festival supporters.

The process is extraordinary, as is the finished artwork that participants were able to create in just one six-hour workshop!!

It was a capacity crowd in Edith Wharton’s elegant drawing room at the Mount for the reading by the three winners of the BFWW Essay Contest on Femininity, sponsored by Michelle Gillett and Nina Ryan, and judged by Alison Larkin.

Audience assembled at the Mount for the Gala Festival Finale

Nina Ryan and Michelle Gillett, who have shepherded many budding Berkshire writers to successful publication with their writing workshops, editing and agenting skills, opened the proceedings with many thanks to the 50 women who submitted their essays to the contest.

Nina Ryan

Michelle Gillett

Alison Larkin warmed up the audience with a marvelous comedic performance based on her autobiographical novel The English American, which has just been published as an audio book, and is on its way to becoming a major motion picture.  Alison had the audience laughing and sharing along with the joys and challenges of her experience as a creative young woman in an adoptive family that didn’t quite know what to make of her talents.

Alison Larkin

Then it was the turn of the prizewinners.

First up was Suzi Fowle, whose moving essay told of how her daughter’s impending rendezvous with menarche brought up all kinds of memories of her own first period, as well as resolutions to do more to nurture her daughter through this important life transition.

Suzanne Fowle

Sheela Clary read a piece about her experience as a Peace Corps volunteer in Papua New Guinea, and how she spent a terrifying night convinced she was about to be raped…only to learn later that her host “Papa” had been standing guard by her door the whole night to protect her.

Sheela Clary

Both Suzi and Sheela choked up as they read, and there were many tears in the audience as well, as their honesty and willingness to reveal their own struggles was deeply appreciated by their listeners.

Hilda Banks Shapiro

Hilda Banks Shapiro, the first prize winner, read an essay that looked back over a lifetime of strength and courage; focusing on how, as a young mother of 12, she used her intuitive grit and courage as a woman to find her own voice, and to make it on her own as a single mom after her husband walked out on the family, leaving them with a dairy farm that only managed to lose money.  Again, not a dry eye in the house as Hilda finished her story!

The presentation ended with a few remarks by yours truly, Festival founding director Jennifer Browdy de Hernandez. I was surprised and moved when members of the organizing committee, Alice Myers and Judy Nardacci, presented me with flowers and a spoken tribute, and I went on to express how much I have appreciated all the support and enthusiasm that the Festival has generated in all the hosts, organizers and participants, as well as the audiences that have turned out in such droves. It is truly inspiring and energizing to see how much talent is hiding away in these Berkshire hills, and I am already looking forward to more occasions to bring us together to share our gifts and voices, and in so doing, change the world.

Here are some great photos of the Gala Reception that followed the reading, taken by Suzi Banks Baum, Artist Mom extraordinaire, of Laundry Line Divine fame.

Sonia Pilcer, Hester Velmans and Jana Laiz

Essay Contest and Gala Finale hosts Nina Ryan and Michelle Gillett

Hester Velmans and Festival director Jennifer Browdy de Hernandez

Essay contest judge and host Alison Larkin, holding a copy of the new audiobook edition of her bestselling novel The English American

Guests Mary and Lila Berle

We hope the Festival will brighten the front door of the Mount in March for many years to come

The Stockbridge Library hosted a capacity crowd on Friday night for the panel on self-publishing organized by Carole Owens, with Hester Velmans, Jana Laiz and Melissa Batalin.

From left, Melissa Batalin, Carole Owens, Hester Velmans and Jana Laiz

Each author had her own take on the relative merits of self-publishing, as opposed to trying the more traditional big publishing route, but all thought it was a very worthwhile avenue to explore.

Melissa Batalins, who runs Troy Bookmakers, shared a wealth of information about how to make your dream book a reality.

Jana Laiz, who runs her own imprint, Crow Flies Press, shared her war stories of being a DIY publisher and author, but she glowed when sharing the fruits of her labor.  Her success stories include Weeping Under This Same Moon and Twelfth Stone.

Hester Velmans talked about her two books for young readers, the first of which gained such a following that they positively demanded that a series follow–and it has!

And Carole Owens shared her stories of being published by big publishing companies, which she said, included enough difficult experiences that she was quite open to considering the possibility of other avenues.

The audience was filled with questions and comments, making for a lively discussion until the library closed its doors at 8 pm.

Audience in the Stockbridge Library

Made in the Berkshires co-curators Hilary Somers Deely and Barbara Sims hosted a benefit performance entitled “This Woman’s Work,” featuring Berkshire women writers reading their own work, staged readings of new works by local women playwrights, and songs by singer-songwriter Lisa Mandeville.

A full house at the Unicorn Theater for This Woman's Work

Mary Mott started off the evening, reading her funny, poignant short stories.

Mary Mott

Berkshire Theater Group Executive Director Kate Maguire and Barbara Sims joined forces in a staged reading of “Adjustments: A Gentle Comedy for Cynical Times,” by Gloria Miller and Ilene Tetenbaum.

Kate Maguire and Barbara Sims (seated)

“After Prom,” a play by Jane Denitz Smith, was given a lively staged reading by Lauren Stanek, Cody Miller and Hilary Somers Deely.

Condy Miller (seated), Lauren Stanek, Hilary Somers Deely

Stockbridge artist Susan Merrill read one of her short stories, which one audience member compared in content and delivery to the deadpan humor of Andy Rooney.

Susan Merrill

A staged reading of the screenplay “Lovesick,” by Maria Nation, about a girl whose early sexual abuse leads her to become a nymphomaniac, had the audience spellbound.  Cast members were Rudi Bach, Corinna May, Emma Dweck, Cody Miller, Walton Wilson and Hilary Somers Deely.

Staged reading of "Lovesick"

Cody Miller in Lovesick

Lovesick cast

Lisa Mandeville, backed by her husband Fran Mandeville, delighted the audience with several original songs.

Lisa and Fran Mandeville

The evening ended with a lively talkback between the writers and the audience.

This Woman's Work writers' panel with co-curators Barbara Sims and Hilary Somers Deely, standing

The evening, which ended with dessert, prosecco and general good cheer, gave the audience a tantalizing taste of what is to come in next year’s Made in the Berkshires Festival, slated for Columbus Day Weekend, 2012.

Educator/filmmaker duo Cindy Parrish and Meg Agnew screened their film HEROIC GIRLZ at Simon’s Rock as part of this year’s Festival of Women Writers.  The film, starring four 11-year-old girls including Cindy’s daughter Emma Parrish Post, invites viewers to imagine the early lives of famous historical women like Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Amelia Earhart.

Meg Agnew (left) and Cindy Parrish

After the screening, Meg and Cindy led the audience in several writing exercises designed to stimulate the imagination and help writers tap back into the feistiness of their pre-adolescent selves.  A lively time was had by all!

Cindy Parrish

Bard writing and literature faculty members Celia Bland and Susan Fox Rogers came over to Simon’s Rock to read their work as part of this year’s Festival.

Celia Bland

Celia Bland read powerful poetry about her ancestry and family legacies that persist into the present.

Susan Fox Rogers read from her new memoir, My Reach, which combines environmental and nature writing about her kayaking experiences on the Hudson River, with the narrative of her parents’ deaths and her grieving process.

Susan Fox Rogers

Both writers held the audience’s rapt attention, and engaged in lively discussion afterwards.

It was standing room only at the Bookstore on March 25 for the presentation of folktales from three different cultures: Greek, Hungarian and the Appalachian Mountains.

Vera Kalm

Vera Kalm read a funny, poignant story from her own translation of a famous Hungarian woman folk storyteller.

Judy Nardacci reading Zoe Dalheim's Greek folktale

Judy Nardacci stood in for Zoe Dalheim, who was home nursing a cold, reading a marvelous folktale in the Greek tradition, written by Zoe.

Dolores Burch

Dolores Burch delighted the audience with her rendition of a traditional “Jack” tale from the American Appalachians.

The event concluded with a lively reception featuring homemade goodies and wine from host Matt Tannenbaum’s Get Lit wine bar.

The BFWW celebration of International Women’s Day on March 18 took the form of a daylong film festival with the theme “Human Rights, Activism and the Arts.”

In the morning, the Berkshire International Film Festival sponsored the screening of SARABAH, the inspiring story of Sista Fa, a Senegalese rap star who rose from a difficult, impoverished childhood to overcome gender discrimination and become the outstanding performer she was meant to be–and then used her talent and charisma to lend support to the Tostan campaign to end female genital cutting in Senegal.

In the afternoon, Pamela Yates was on hand at Bard College at Simon’s Rock to screen and discuss her new film GRANITO: HOW TO NAIL A DICTATOR, produced by Paco de Onis with Skylight Productions.

Pamela was introduced by program co-sponsor Ricky Bernstein, director of the Berkshire Human Rights Speaker Series, as well as Eleanore Velez of Berkshire Community College.

Ricky Bernstein

Eleanore Velez

After the screening of the gripping, powerful film, Pamela Yates took the stage to answer questions from the audience.

Pamela Yates

Pamela’s personal story of bringing her “granito,” her little grain of sand, persistently to bear on the human rights atrocities in Guatemala was very inspiring for the audience to hear.  GRANITO tells the story of how Pamela’s early work as a filmmaker in Guatemala during the genocide years of the late 1970s and early 1980s bore unexpected fruit when her footage was used as evidence in an attempt to extradite a general to Spain to stand trial for genocide.

The story has a positive ending, too, as this general, Rios Montt, who for years continued to act with unapologetic impunity, has recently been ordered to stand trial in Guatemala for crimes against humanity.

The appreciative audience gave Yates a standing ovation for her work on the film, and left the hall feeling inspired  to look for occasions to add their own “granitos” to the on-going, worldwide struggles for social justice.

Listening to Pamela Yates speak at the McConnell Theater, Bard College at Simon's Rock

Danke Li

Danke Li, Professor of East Asian Studies at Fairfield University, mesmerized her audience with her film and stories of the struggles of ordinary Chinese women during the Chinese war with Japan.  Millions of Chinese retreated to the city of Chongqing during the war years, severely straining food supplies and living quarters.  Chinese women were the backbone of families’ survival, Professor Li argued, keeping the home fires burning despite terrible loss and privation as the Japanese relentlessly bombed the city.

A presentation that brought to the Berkshires the voices of Chinese women whose stories have never before been told–and without the efforts of Professor Li and her students, might have been lost forever, since the women celebrated in the film and book are now reaching the end of their lives.

Friday night’s event cohosted by Orion and Gastronomica magazines (and held at Williams College Museum of Art) offered a rich array of poetry, prose, and reflection for the hundred people gathered there to listen.

Ruth Reichl speaks beneath a projection of the Walker Evans photograph, "Kitchen Wall, Alabama Farmstead, 1936."

Celebrated writers Francine Prose,  Ellen Dore Watson, Elizabeth Graver, Patty Crane, and Ruth Reichl each read pieces inspired by the same photograph by Walker Evans–some more historical, some personal, some associative and collagelike–and spoke about their creative process.

Ellen Dore Watson speaks. Behind her, left to right: Elizabeth Graver, Ruth Reichl, Patty Crane, Francine Prose.

A young man’s response to the Festival screening of MISSREPRESENTATION on March 14 at Simon’s Rock:

Hannah Fries reading at the Women's Interfaith Institute

Poetry editor and associate editor Hannah Fries of Orion Magazine delighted her listeners last night with a series of poems about women like Noah’s wife, or the Oracle at Delphi, who have come down to us through history and myth as unnamed traces of women who lived, loved and left their mark.

In Hannah’s imagination, such women have been like spring bulbs planted beneath rocks, trying courageously but often fruitlessly to push their way up into the light.

Through her clear, powerful poetry, they found their way into the sunshine, and brought all of us with them.

If you’d like to read Hannah’s poem “Pygmalion’s Girl,” you can find it here at Mead Magazine.

Madonna a Pelican, from MADONNA COMIX, by Celia Bland and Dianne Kornberg

Celia Bland, author of the intriguing multimedia poetry volume Madonna Comix, which features stunning graphic art by Dianne Kornberg, will be the host of Sunday’s BFWW reading “Annunciation,” with Sarah Towers and Harriet Brown, two accomplished writers whose work in a variety of genres includes pieces in The New York Times Magazine, O Magazine, Glamour, and many other publications.

Anyone who has been touched by the deeply destructive world of eating disorders will be especially interested in this program, since Ms. Brown will be reading from her new memoir, Brave Girl Eating: A Family’s Struggle with Anorexia.

2 p.m., Blodgett House, Bard College at Simon’s Rock.

Free and open to the public.

Tonight at the Ramsdell Library in Housatonic, five poets took the stage to share their lyrical observations, memories, dreams and desires.

It was a beautiful series of presentations, moving from images of grieving daughters at a mother’s bedside, to solitary hikes up familiar Berkshire landscapes, to far-flung ports of call.

Jan Hutchinson shared poems about her alter ego, Grace, who always seemed to come at the right moment to offer words of wisdom or advice.

Jan Hutchinson

A lovely line from Jan’s work: “Moods are the inner life’s unpredictable weather.”  Later the narrator continues, “Moods are a lot like chickens.  We have to herd them out the front door.”

Susan Melot wrote about scenes from her daily life in New York and Becket, MA, where she and her husband have a home.  Her poem “Manhattan Corpus” brought the city to life in a series of metaphors, comparing the metropolis to a living body.

Susan Melot

Tammis Coffin

Christine Ward

Claudette Webster, one of the coordinators of the Berkshire Festival of Women Writers and a poet herself, shared several poems that dipped into different emotionally charged moments of her life, keeping the audience spellbound.

Claudette Webster

Maria Sirois in action

On Day 4 of the Festival, Maria Sirois offered a writing workshop, “Happiness: Writing as a Path to Positive Transformation.”  Having seen Maria in action before, I knew she would be giving us something very special, and I was not disappointed.

She led us in a series of writing prompts that asked us to think about what our own personal sources of happiness have been.

She shared a great lesson: that pleasure plus meaning equals happiness.

And she reminded us to always “lean towards the light” in our creative endeavors, rather than dwelling on what upsets us.

The two hours of Maria’s workshop passed all too quickly, leaving me hungry for more of her wisdom.  Fortunately, she is working on a new book that will share her talents and knowledge much more widely in the world!

Maria left us with a few parting gems of thought.  The one I found the most powerful is this: Have faith that who you are matters to the world right now.

Write out of that faith.

More of my reflections on Maria’s workshop are posted on Transition Times.

—Jennifer Browdy de Hernandez

If you came to last Saturday’s “Women of a Certain Age” panel, it may be that like me, you just can’t get the sound of Sonia’s marvelous characters Pincus and Faye out of your mind.

Well, here comes a treat!

Sonia has graciously shared with us another chapter from her novel-in-progress, The Last Hotel, about the residents of a residential hotel on the Upper West Side.  This is the chapter about that marvelous, mouth-watering brisket that brings the two lonely-hearts together.

Enjoy!

Suite 32

(c.) Sonia Pilcer, 2012

Once a week, Henry slipped rent envelopes under residents’ doors.  Saul  collected on Fridays.  Standing behind the top-half of the closed door of his ancient office, a tiny cubicle with black cubbyholes for mail, a cracked peg board with keys and an extinct switchboard, he studied his ledger with everyone’s names and room numbers.

Finally, he looked up.

Faye Meyer paid him forty-five dollars.  He stared at her check, peering in the light as if he hadn’t received the identical check the week before.  It might be forged.

“Okay,” he said, putting a mark next to her name in his large ledger.

“Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it.”  He grumbled something in Polish or Yiddish to himself.

Though Saul could be a petty, parsimonious pain in the ass, everyone respected, even protected him.  It was hard not to stare at the blue number tattoo  on his left arm when his sleeve was rolled up.  There was a letter, which looked like a B, a hyphen, five or six numbers.  Faye tried to make out the exact numerals, but feared he’d notice her staring.

With his glossy, thick hair, black tight curls streaked with silver, his strong physique, Saul must have been something in his youth.  But thinking about his youth, she realized how he had spent it — in some German camp in Poland where they branded him like livestock.

Reardon, the Irish bartender on the second floor, stepped to the side of the elevator as Faye entered.  A strikingly handsome man with sculptured features, he had white skin like a baby’s that had never seen the light.  A regular vampire with very black brows and deep-set black eyes.  Black turtleneck.  Once he’d been an actor.  Rumor had it that he’d had a role in a Fellini film.

They nodded at each other.  He was polite enough, but never made a moment’s eye contact.  Oh well.  Faye reminded herself that she was a member of the Invisible Women’s Club.  As he walked out of the elevator, he nodded at her again.

Faye liked living at the Last Hotel.   The random roll of the dice every time you stepped in the elevator.  If you were going to live alone, as she did since Putzface walked out on her, there was always other people to watch, to imagine their lives.  And it was a crosstown bus to Hunter College, where she taught.  Often she walked across Central Park in the morning.  People said she was crazy to go by herself.  She loved the park and walked briskly.

Now Faye sat down on her couch and took off her shoes.  Then sighed.  The end of another week.  She’d only had a few classes.  She had to read her graduate student’s thesis proposal.  And her Colette article for Feminist Press was overdue.

She walked into her tiny kitchenette.  Open her small fridge, took out a package of sirloin wrapped in butcher paper.  Laying it flat on a wooden block, she contemplated the red meat.  She could never be a vegetarian.  She began to hammer the meat with her fists.

If only I had someone. He doesn’t have to be terrific or even great. But weekends sometimes seemed so long.  She’d go for B+, B, maybe even B-.  She said this to herself not with self-pity.  She’d had her share of lovers.  And she really didn’t mind being rid of Putzface.

Gathering her ingredients, she now wondered how she would build him.  Her Fantasy Man.  Of flesh and sinew, of course.  Broad shoulders.  She liked that.  Strong arms.  Dark, curly hair, but not too much.   Putzface had black hair on his back.  Now the truth could be told.  She hated it!   Graceful in body and speech.

Faye massaged kosher salt into the meat, imagining she was on a beach, spreading oil on his back.  The salt felt like sand.  Peeling the onions, she wept real tears, which she laughed at as she wiped them with her sleeve.  Pathetic. Peeling potatoes.  Carrots.  Blending them all in her mother’s black iron pot as more tears trickled down her cheeks.

Faye swirled her onions slowly in oil until they were thick and golden, floating in their own juices, the oil sizzling. How she loved the smells.  And how it reminded her of her mother, who she’d lost just two years ago.

Once she’d read an article in a women’s magazine.  “Are You Just Like Your Mother?” Well, she had her pot.  It was like spending a few hours with her mother.

Sadie Goldstein spent all of Friday preparing for the Sabbath.  Brisket was her specialty.  She too rubbed kosher salt into the beef, kneading it into the folds, until her fingers were raw, the salt pinching her skin.

As Faye stirred the iron pot, steam rose to her face, curling her hair.  Double, double toil and trouble. She added the sliced steak pieces. Wiping her forehead with the back of her hand, she caught her reflection in the small window.

She had a strong face – a prominent nose that might overwhelm but for her jutting cleft chin.  Red hair dyed to the limit of respectability, definitely a hussy shade, created a nice frisson with her Ph.D.  Once Faye had been sought after, mooned over, whistled at, loved, and then not.  Now she was an aging Siren.  Would anyone hear her song?  Would she ever be loved and desired again?

“The Invisible Women’s Club,” she reminded herself.  Her sexuality obscure to men of all ages, except those close to the grave, who wanted a caretaker.  How could she accept it though?  To not want someone to see you? To look at your face, meet your eye?  Yet women of the club were hardly invisible to each other.  They scrutinized each highlight, every lost or gained pound, not to mention, any ‘work’ done.  “Did you do anything?  Your wrinkles disappeared!”

“I had a good night’s sleep.”

No, Faye hadn’t done anything nor did she intend to.  She worked for every wrinkle on her face.  So one part of her would look young while the rest sagged?  She wasn’t young.  And she’d paid heavily for her hard-won lines of experience.

At that moment, the telephone rang.  Faye didn’t move.  Five rings, her outgoing message, then she heard her editor Judi’s voice.  “The deadline is past.  Where is it?  Faye, I won’t be pleased if it’s not on my desk on Monday.”

She was supposed to deliver an article on “Women Transitioning: Colette as Role Model.”  Publish or perish.  Well, not really.  She already had tenure.  But she still had to finish the last part.

Faye had a doctorate from City College, specializing in French 20^th Century.  She’d lived in Paris for a year, fallen for a French painter, Claude. A year at the Sorbonne.  Lots of wine, lots of sex.   And a thesis: “Master or Muse: The Subjugation of Colette’s Art” which she had turned into a monograph.

She had to write the article this weekend.  Most of it was written.  Just needed a final read through and a strong ending.  Her mother’s brisket would keep her company.  She set the timer for an hour and a half.

Faye walked over to her wooden desk, opening a notebook.  In her notes, she found a quote from Colette that she’d been thinking about.

“You have to get old.  Don’t cry, don’t clasp your hands in prayer, don’t rebel, you have to get old.  Repeat the words to yourself, not as a howl of despair but as the boarding call to a necessary departure.”

Colette faced the same daunting struggle.  To put a so-called good face on it.  Yet in 1921, before turning 50, she had a facelift.  Then she became entrepreneurial, created a beauty institute where she dispensed her ‘secret recipes’ and conducted makeovers in a white lab coat!  Never underestimate a woman’s vanity.  Faye raised her cheeks with her fingers.

Walking into her small bathroom, she turned on the hot water for a bath.  Just hot, hot water.  It was a good, old-fashioned tub with claws. This was one of her Friday rituals.  (She tried not to teach on Fridays.)  To cleanse herself of the week.  Her own mikvah before Shabbat, though definitely secular.  She threw in desert bath salts, sprinkled lilac essence, and a little baby oil to soften her skin.

As she melted into the water, she felt a tweak in her bijoux. Her lovely jewel.  It still lived!  Jewel had the word Jew in it.  What Jonathan, when he loved her, called the little man in the canoe.  Faye raised her legs and pointed her toes.  Studying Martha Graham technique had preserved her stomach muscles, given her strong, muscular legs.  She exhaled and raised her pelvic floor.  Squeezed.  Oh, those kegels! Not kugels! She giggled.  Perhaps like so many other things, sex was wasted on the young. Would anyone ever see her again?  More seriously, would she ever fuck again?  She applied her Anti-Aging Crème into the pores of her face.

Wrapping herself in a towel, she wandered into her tiny kitchenette.  Raised the lid of the iron pot.  Beef effluvia filled the room.  She dipped a wooden spoon, blew, then tasted.  It still needed time.  She added a half a cup of wine, and pat of butter for greater succulence.  Cholesterol, be damned!

Jonathan had been a great appreciator of her brisket.  Though a self-hating Jew, like so many of the lefties they knew from City College, he made an exception for Jewish food.  Good Jewish food and deli, of course.  She’d married him when he was finishing graduate school.  She worked for a French publishing company for a year. He taught linguistics and Foucault deconstructionism at City.  They had two grown children.  After Elissa, their second daughter graduated Bennington, he spent several weeks of his sabbatical, writing a novel at an artists colony in Virginia.  He couldn’t publish the novel. He returned to teaching.  He started fucking his linguistics intern, some linguistics they must have performed, right in her own bed, as she discovered them that Wednesday afternoon when her shrink rescheduled her appointment.

The narrative piqued her colleagues in the lunch cafeteria at Hunter.

“A woman is incomplete until she is married,” said Betty Alecson, Applied Sciences, married to a reborn Scientologist.  “Then she’s finished.  You’re lucky to be free of Jon.”

“True, true,” agreed Selena Grosbard, an abandoned Byron scholar, whose husband ran off with a graduate student.  “When a woman steals your husband, the best revenge is to let her keep him.”  Her pause very pregnant.  “Don’t worry.  She’ll find out.”

“You have two choices in life,” added Alice Valens, a never-married Chaucerian.  “You can stay single and be miserable, or get married and wish you were dead.”

They were her Greek chorus.  Like so many women, feminists like her, they often sounded like they despised men.  She didn’t.  Her father, Isaac, was not an educated man, but had a gentle, compassionate nature, though he worked hard in the docks at Sheepshead Bay.  Yes, Jonathan was a putz.  No doubt about that.   She slipped into blue jeans and a denim shirt.

That’s when she heard the sound. Turning around, Faye saw something curious.  Slowly, her window rose by itself, and a fully formed, rather tall hooded figure crawled in through the fire escape.  She would have screamed, if she hadn’t sat on her bed in pure, open-mouthed amazement.

Was this her Fantasy Man?  Had her imagination created a golem?  She didn’t believe in supernatural kind of stuff, but she sat as if paralyzed.  Whatever it was, was cloaked in darkness, but there was an aura of light surrounding it.  She couldn’t see a face, but a ruby stone shone from a long, delicate finger.

“Who are you?” Faye asked the apparition.

“Who do you think I am?”

“My projection.  That’s what my analyst would say.  That I am transferring my need for love in my life, for a man –“

“Oh, shush, you!  Think of me as a fairy godmother,” she said, pulling down her hood. “I’m just here to give you a good turn.”

“How come?”

“Because we had a lottery, and I drew you.”

“What kind of lottery?”

“You wouldn’t understand.  It’s a complex equation of mitzvot, tzedakah, and because you need it.”

“Excuse me, I don’t understand, but I do have to check my brisket,” she said.  “I’ll be right back.”

She followed Faye into her kitchenette, watching as she stirred the beef, onions sizzling in her black iron pot.  “How did you prepare it?” she inquired.

“A steak, I used sirloin this time, oh, I don’t know, a little tomato paste, onions, carrots, potatoes.  Salt and pepper.  I throw in red wine.”

“And garlic?”

“No, my mother didn’t use garlic in her brisket.”

“You should.  Whole cloves which you sear –“

“What are you?  The Cooking Dybbuk?”

Faye looked, but couldn’t make out a form.  Who cared.  She was really enjoying this, whatever it was.  Maybe she was just losing her mind.  “So what can you do for me? Are you like a genie who offers wishes?”

She laughed.

“What’s funny?”

“That a woman like you goes to bed alone every night.”

“Huh?”

“We know your husband was a worthless piece of garbage.”

“So?”

“You shouldn’t give up.  You’re still young.”

“I’m over fifty.“

“I’m not impressed.  I’m over several hundred.  Go find a lover.”

“There’s no one around.”

“I see a man.  A man of fine character.”

“Oh.  Who’s that?”

“Think close to home.”

“The hotel?  There’s no one.  Saul is married.  Lenny, never.  Ugh.   Reardon doesn’t talk and besides he’s not interested.”

“Nu?”

“Pincus?”

“Pincus.”

“He’s an old man.”

“Pincus,” she said solemnly.  “There’s more than meets the eye.”

“How do you know?”

“I was married to him in one of my lifetimes.  He doesn’t eat well anymore.”

“Pincus?” she asked the apparition.

“There’s more than meets the eye,” she repeated.  Then disappeared.

Faye walked over to the window with the fire escape.  It was shut.  She tried to raise the window, but decades of paint prevented its budging.  Had she imagined the whole thing? Was it a hallucination?  Maybe something in the brisket.  She sighed.  Could Pincus be her fantasy man?

That’s when her eyes fell on the silver candlesticks, placed high on a shelf above her table.  They had belonged to her mother.  She took them down, blowing the dust off their surface.  She had the impulse to light Shabbat candles.  What the hell.  Faye was not a believer.  She was, in fact, a devout disbeliever.  And yet.  The Sabbath bride was on her way.   Faye lit the first candle, then the second.  She closed her eyes, hands cupped over her face, and said a soft prayer.

If you ever were under the impression that it’s all downhill after 50, the gutsy, lusty, deeply honest stories and poems shared today at the “Women of a Certain Age” reading quickly set the story straight.

Sonia Pilcer

Led by host Sonia Pilcer, a longtime writer and teacher of writing who divides her time between homes in Columbia County and New York City, the reading featured four other strong women writers, ranging from women who have not yet published, to one woman, Sondra Zeidenstein, who runs her own successful press, Chicory Blue, dedicated to publishing poetry by women over seventy.

It was impressive to hear these women write so openly, with humor and humility, about characters whose experiences with love, erotic satisfaction and frustration, and the challenges of aging must mirror their own.

Zeidenstein read poems honoring two of her mentors in poetry: Allen Ginsburg and Sharon Olds, both of whom have been willing to reveal more to the world than most writers of their own inner-most desires and longings.

Sondra Zeidenstein

Beth Sack read a story about a woman dealing with cancer, and realizing that she would need to leave her husband, a distant and unhelpful figure, if she were to survive.

Beth Sack

Joan Embree

Joan Embree read an over-the-top story about a woman living with a man so horrid that no one is sorry when she sets out to murder him by appealing to his bottomless gluttony.  When he falls over dead after an orgy of eating her delicious home-cooked food,the audience cheered! Listening to Joan read off the drop-dead menu, it was easy to remember that this is a writer who spent many years professionally engaged in gourmet food preparation.

Victoria Sullivan represented a rollicking, sexy voice in older women’s writing, reading several poems that had the audience roaring with delight at her razor-sharp humor, for example when one of her narrators says matter-of-factedly, “I seem to be a woman in whom lust trumps the moral imperatives of the moment.”

Her poem “Blessing the Body” was exquisitely beautiful; perhaps she will be willing to share it with Festival blog readers in a later post.

Victoria Sullivan

Sonia Pilcer herself brought down the house reading a story from her novel-in-progress about the inhabitants of a rooming house on the upper West Side of Manhattan.  Laced with Yiddish and bold with sexual honesty, the story features two characters who might seem entirely innocuous to an outsider, but are brought to live in all their passion and color under the strokes of Sonia’s pen.

a small section of the audience at the reading

It was clear from the lively discussion following the readings that there are many “women writers of a certain age” in the Berkshires who are hungry to share their stories and learn from each other in the process, and many women and men of all ages who delight in listening!

Look for this panel, with a changing cast of “women of a certain age” readers, to become a Festival fixture in the coming years.

BLESSING THE BODY

by Victoria Sullivan,”Poet Laureate of the Woodstock Roundtable” on radio WDST 100.1 FM

We must gather the parts of our bodies up and love them.

Now I love my little hands.  And is it because someone,

a man, told me they were “perfect little hands”? Did that

make them worthy of my love?  Each part deserves

a blessing.  Here are my feet that hold my weight.

I will love them with their cherry painted toe nails.

My legs are sturdy, I do not fall over.  Bless them too.

And my hips that undulate slowly in dance, I will absolve them

of all crimes.  They need the music. My belly grounds me,

my breasts cry out for love, my neck holds the huge mass

of my head, surely a worth task.  All these I bless, and my eyes,

and ears and mouth that loves to kiss and eat and eat and kiss.

Don’t let me forget my tasting tongue that brushes his skin

and keeps my mouth from getting lonely.  My teeth and lips

of course demand their credit.  But it’s my hair that wants

always to wave the crowd on and guard my scalp and brain—

my hair that shouts a song to all my body: Dance on.

All this as youth slips further and further away, as if

the goddess is laughing at the ironies of life.  I am ready

to dance around the Beltane fires at last, while friends go down

to hip and knee surgeries daily.  At what point is ripeness all?

Never mind the question.  I will bless my body parts

because like yours and yours and yours, they do their best

to keep our hearts beating, the blood still rushing in our veins.

I will kneel down to this husk in which I live, this system

of bones and sinews, this fragile clothing for my soul,

and let tears flow at all the beauty that we grasp

so very incredibly briefly on the swift train ride of life.

Out of the Mouths of Babes

A capacity crowd packed Blodgett House at Bard College at Simon’s Rock tonight for the eagerly anticipated Out of the Mouths of Babes event, organized by Suzi Banks Baum of Laundry Line Divine with Alana Chernila, Janet Elsbach, Michelle Gillett, Gina Hyams, Jenny Laird and Matt Tannenbaum.

Each writer read a short piece linking creativity and motherhood, bringing the rapt audience to laughter and tears with personal narratives about the interweaving of these two dimensions in their lives.

The discussion afterwards was honest and profound, as audience members picked up some of the threads tossed out in the readings and added their own stories, questions and concerns to the conversation.

As always in a Festival event, new friendships and connections were forged, old relationships deepened, and all went home feeling richer for the sharing of our all the talent in our midst.

Discussing motherhood and creativity

Michelle Gillett reads to a packed house