A Favorite Author, A Favorite Activity

May Sarton is one of my favorite writers. Although a poet, novelist and journalist, I enjoy her journals most. I also have a couple of unusual connections to Ms. Sarton in that a good friend of mine in Nashville worked for a dear friend of Sarton's, H. Sharp (whom May referred to as the "Queen of Tennessee") and a friend/professor here at UT, M. Kallet, edited a book of writings on Sarton's poetry and also visited May at times (Sarton was M's daughter's godmother). I wish I could have written to or met May Sarton. She died in 1995, just a year or two after Ms. Sharp gave my friend Sarton's first journal "Plant Dreaming Deep" to read and P. passed it on to me. I was hooked and eventually collected nearly all of her journals and a couple of her novels. I've also read Sarton's letters to Juliette Huxley, which were absolutely beautiful. If I move to China, I will most likely travel with very few books, perhaps only a few paperbacks. Sarton will definitely be among them.

The beautiful little beaded pouch is from Nana and is now what houses my cell phone.

I've been swimming after work for the last four days. So relaxing and refreshing. When I get to the pool I can't wait to drop my towels on a chair and get in the cool water. It's usually fairly deserted. This week, however, hordes of young kids have been invading the pool in the early evenings due to special camps that UT hosts over the summer. Yesterday evening it was young 10-12 year old boys. If I were a 10 year old girl I probably would have thought I had died and gone to heaven as these boys hooped and hollered and had a grand old time in the water. But I'm not. So I didn't.