I Missed Rick Bragg, but Hope He is Doing Well

I am just getting home from Roswell, Georgia, today. I made the trip down to attend a workshop by Rick Bragg, a wonderful southern novelist. The title of his workshop was How to Write about Your Family without Getting Killed. I registered a few months ago, sent my check and looked forward to Friday afternoon when Roswell Reads would host this event.

But, a few weeks ago I received an email that said Rick Bragg was ill. I have since learned that he has Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma. He could not be there in person, but there would be a video of an interview with him. I was given the opportunity to have a refund, but I wanted to see the video.

So I arrived in Roswell on Thursday afternoon and had coffee with my sister and my niece. We went to dinner later that evening.  After I climbed into bed around 11:00 PM, I began having severe pain in my right foot. I knew what it was. It was nerve pain caused by spinal stenosis in my lower back. Sometimes sitting too long brings it on and sometimes I have no idea what ignites the the sharp stabbing pain that goes on and on and on.

I took extra strength Tylenol and wrapped my foot in my heating pad. But hours passed and nothing stopped the pain. I walked up and down the hall, wincing and trying not to cry out loud. Lying down made the pain worse and I could not sit at all.

After a few hours passed, I took a hydrocodone with Tylenol. It is a mild dose, but sometimes it breaks the pain cycle. However, not on Thursday night. Before daylight I had taken all the pain pills I thought were safe to take. Still, I did not sleep at all that night. After I had breakfast, I went back to bed. The pain had subsided. I finally slept. 

The Rick Bragg workshop began at 1:00 PM, but I could not go. I was so dopey from the pain medicine that I had to stay in bed. I slept off and on until evening. What a disappointment! 

I have done much research on Spinal Lumbar Stenosis and millions of people suffer with this horrendous pain as I have for the past couple of years. I am searching for a new method of treatment and I hope it works for me. My life is being turned upside down by this problem.

Dear Friends, please send positive thoughts my way. If you talk to God, please send up a prayer. I have much work to do and can't be sidelined by all this pain.

Books, Writers and Poems on My Mind Today

Blue Ridge, GA covered in fog on Saturday morning

Having had such a stimulating weekend at the Blue Ridge Writers' Conference in Blue Ridge, GA, I can't settle on one subject to write on today. I'll just mention a few ideas, books, people, and moments that grab me.

1. Rick Bragg's essay in Southern Living. In the very back of the magazine (the present issue is not online yet) he writes a column called Southern Journal. Some of you know that I have strong feelings about saying thank you. Rick, spurred on by his wife to express his gratitude with thank you notes, sent letters to Mr. Airline Executive, Mr. Fancy Restaurant Owner, and my favorite, Mr. Satellite Television Service Operator. Rick is one of my favorite authors. If you like southern literature by a Pulitzer prize-winning writer, find his books and begin reading. And if you have ever had a gripe with the airlines, a restaurant, television service or computer and Internet service, you might want to read Rick's letters in the April 2012 Southern Living magazine.

2. A book called Writing in Style by Bobbie Christmas, writer and editor for more than 30 years. She not only answers questions about grammar, but her advice is current, 21st Century. She incorporates contemporary technology. 

3. A Memoir: Invisible Sisters by Jessica Handler whom I met Saturday at the Writers Conference. I attended both her sessions and found Jessica who lives in Atlanta, to be extremely knowledgeable about writing. She teaches Creative Writing and hopefully we can host her at Writers Circle soon. Her story is about losing both her little sisters from illness, and growing up the only surviving child in a family torn apart by devastating loss. I have only had time to skim the book, but I feel it will help me make decisions of what I need to include in my own memoir which I continue to write. A writing exercise in class became an Aha Moment for me.

4. My Grandfather's Hands, poem from Scott Owens' book, For One Who Knows How to Own Land. I was immediately in love with Paternity, the first of Scott's books that I ordered, and I feel that way about this new book, but in a different way. One poem is so graphic, Slaughter, that it was hard to read, but the poem about his farmer grandfather's hands takes me back to my roots, to my father's hands. I studied Daddy's hands when he didn't know. Burned by sun, so brown they didn't seem to belong to his white arms beneath his shirt sleeves, his nails that never could be completely clean, and the south Georgia dirt that embedded the cracks in his fingers -- I could see them in Scott's poem.