Last Welty Event on Thursday, October 29

Please join us in the library on Thursday, October 29 as we discuss The Optimist's Daughter. This will be the final program in this month of celebrating Eudora Welty. We'll start at 12:45 pm. So, please join us for an enlightening conversation about the book.

When "Halley Came to Jackson"

Tonight and especially early in the morning on Wednesday, we'll be able to see the Orionid meteor shower, a yearly event which should be a good show around here because skies are clear.

Eudora wrote about the night sky and learning to appreciate it as a child. From One Writer's Beginnings:

"The night sky over my childhood Jackson was velvety black. I could see the full constellations in it and call their names; when I could read, I knew their myths. Though I was always waked for eclipses, and indeed carried to the window as an infant in arms and shown Halley's Comet in my sleep, and though I'd been taught at our diningroom table about the solar system and knew the earth revolved around the sun, and our moon around us, I never found out the moon didn't come up in the west until I was a writer and Herschel Brickell, the literary critic, told me after I misplaced it in a story. He said valuable words to me about my new profession: 'Always be sure you get your moon in the right part of the sky.'"

I think that I'll honor Eudora tonight and look at the pieces of Halley's that fall from the sky near the new moon.

(By the way, Mary Chapin Carpenter wrote and recorded a song about this Welty memory; the song is entitled "Halley Came to Jackson.")

Welty as Reviewer

Welty was a very prolific book reviewer. Did you know that she wrote a review of the delightful children's book, Charlotte's Web? Her review was published in The New York Times on October 19, 1952--almost precisely fifty-seven years ago today. It's hard to believe that Charlotte and Wilbur are that old!

Here's an excerpt from that review:

"What the book is about is friendship on earth, affection and protection, adventure and miracle, life and death, trust and treachery, pleasure and pain, and the passing of time. As a piece of work it is just about perfect, and just about magical in the way it is done. What it all proves -- in the words of the minister in the story which he hands down to his congregation after Charlotte writes "Some Pig" in her web -- is "that human beings must always be on the watch for the coming of wonders."

Susan Haltom talk was wonderful!

On Monday, October 19, we were enlightened and entertained by garden designer Susan Haltom--via Skype! Susan was in charge of the Welty garden restoration in Jackson, Mississippi. She showed us pictures of the types of plants put in the garden to restore it to its peak from the 1920s to the 1940s. This was the time period in which Eudora's mother, Chestina, was actively tending and planting it.

Susan also showed us some private Welty family pictures, mostly of Eudora, her parents, and two brothers in the garden throughout the years. Susan is using many of these photographs, along with Eudora's letters, in a book she's writing. She expects it to be ready for publication within two years.

Next Event: Monday, October 19

Please join us on Monday, October 19 at 12:45 pm in the library for our next Eudora Welty in Focus event. We'll be videoconferencing with Susan Haltom. Susan was the garden consultant in charge of the restoration of the Welty garden on Pinehurst Street in Jackson, Mississippi. Eudora Welty lived and wrote in this house for a large portion of her life. Chestina Welty, Eudora's mother, planned and maintained the original garden--with much assistance from Eudora.

Monday's Talk

We had a very informative talk on Monday by Kendall Adams. He discussed Welty's photographic style and subject matter. Kendall pointed out that Welty's shots seemed natural, and her method was not marked by traditional rules of composition, making her style different from the styles of some of her contemporaries. She met these people of 1930s Mississippi on their--and her--home turf, conversed with them, and then, when they were at ease with her presence, took their photographs, or, as she often called them, snapshots.

Here are Welty's own words in describing the experience of traveling her home state during the Great Depression:

"By recording what passes, the photographer offers the illusion of not letting it go. These pictures represent such efforts. They are among hundreds made by me in the late 1930s and early '40s in the State of Mississippi. If a value persists in them, it is because life, whatever it meant, had to mean, in those poor times, speaks for itself in the unchanging language of movement and gesture, and looks undefeatedly back at the camera's eye."

"Life ... speaks for itself ...." Eudora usually says it best!

Welty Quote of the Day

“Among all living creatures, only human beings seem to have the knowledge that the moment is passing, and the acute wish to hold that moment. In the most unpretentious snapshot lies the wish to clasp fleeting life. Framing a few square inches of space for the fraction of a second, the photographer may capture—rescue from oblivion—fellow human beings caught in the act of living.” – E. W.