Jane Austen, and her friends, was an eight-week exploration, really a romp, of Austen's six books and brief mentions of the more than one hundred (still counting) re-imaginings of the further adventures of the various beloved characters.
So enjoyed teaching this course in New Paltz, NY to the many Austen aficionadas - and one male for one session.
Now in gratitude for receipt of this letter (although tending to mimic Austen's style too closely, need to get back to my own breezy way)
Dear Garnette,
On behalf of the LLI Council and membership, I want you to know how exceedingly grateful we are to you for all you continue to do to advance our success in responding to this community's enthusiasm for learning.
Jane Austen and Her Admirer's Sequels was one of our most popular courses. The reactions of those who just completed your course reveal how very well you met their expectations. We do hope you found the experience equally gratifying. We are looking forward to your being part of the LLI faculty again in the fall. With our sincerest thanks and best wishes.
Gail K. Gallerie, President
FROM JOURNALISM TO NOVELS TO NON FICTION TO HOSPICE CHAPLAIN TO MEMOIRS TO BLOG TO TV SCRIPT WRITER TO THE SKY'S LIMITLESS - GARNETTE'S JOURNEY
Available here, click my email link to order an autographed copy from me, or order on-line at Amazon. Bookstores everywhere will order for you. If you order from Amazon, please take a moment to review the book please. Thank you = Mahalo nui nui, Garnette
My Own House
By Elswyth Thane
Author, The Strength of These Hills about her life in Vermont plus 30 other books.
The smoke of my own house is better than my neighbor’s fire – Spanish proverb
I was driving to New England in the spring. Little white houses along the way, green lawns, old trees, early bloom – snug, serene, enigmatic. My own house when I came to it would look very much the same. But I carried to it an unreconciled grief and a bottomless fatigue.
So I began unconsciously to play a foolish game with myself as I went. That one, with the window boxes and the picket fence and a collie dog asleep on the porch steps – how would it be by some miracle to escape into the life which went on there, instead of my own? Who came home to it every night and from where? Or that one, with the two-car garage, and the awnings going up and the gardener setting out plants – a lot of money behind that one. How many people, to so much space? I’ve always wanted a really big house . . .
Or that one, just the size for one person, an elderly spinster with a competence, perhaps, self-sufficient and entire, all passion spent. How would it be to live her life from today on, what there was of it – restful and secure and without obligations? Or to start all over again in that one, very new and a little bare, but prosperous, with an almost bridal look in spite of the child’s small wagon in the yard – it was all ahead of them there.
I was feeling old and sick and platitudinous. I wanted to “get away from it all.” Anywhere out of here. That sort of thing.
The game lasted quite a while. I sampled vicarious paradises for about a hundred miles, willfully ignoring the obvious catch in it: each one of those establishments housed its own problem behind the serene front. There isn’t a house without one these days. Would I exchange? Would I really jump blindfold into anyone else’s life and take it up at that point and give them mine to live?
I would not!
The car turned into the winding dirt road that leads to my own white house with green shutters. It was waiting with the sun on it, the meadows on either side frosted with bluets, the red barn planted four-square in what in July would be deep hay.
No miracles, please. My sorrows are familiar ones, with roots. My joys are old and dear. My own is my own and I am at home there. I’ll sit this one out, where I am.
Wilmington, Vermont
(Reprinted from unknown source from a scrapbook found by the kindess of Meg Streeter)
Author Garnette Arledge books include On Angel’s Eve: the caregiver’s manual for meaningful times with your seniors and Wise Secrets of Aloha, as well as numerous newspaper, magazine and journal articles, poetry, fiction and her own grandmother’s collected stories:
Mama Sallie Would Love you: for great grandchildren, Eliabeth and Drew and his children, great-great grands Lilly and Cloux. More details on Biography Tab, just click above on dashboard.
