{"id":4396,"date":"2011-07-27T07:03:49","date_gmt":"2011-07-27T11:03:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thelifeliterary.com\/?p=4396"},"modified":"2011-07-27T07:03:49","modified_gmt":"2011-07-27T11:03:49","slug":"remembering-kurt-a-literary-field-trip","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.thelifeliterary.com\/?p=4396","title":{"rendered":"Remembering Kurt: A Literary Field Trip"},"content":{"rendered":"

“…a very human way to make life more bearable…”<\/em><\/p>\n

I am soaking in the second week of a two week vacation.\u00a0 Week one I spent in my hometown, Indianapolis, for a family reunion (all our children, their spouses, our grandson, Rider, my parents, aunt, cousin and cousins once-removed), and to host a party to celebrate my mother’s 80th birthday, somehow shoehorning forty people into our smallish condo.\u00a0 When the party’s hubbub had died down and Rider and his parents had departed, the rest of us made a pilgrimage to visit the relatively new Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library<\/a> downtown on Senate Avenue.<\/p>\n

The place was small in size but large in inspiration.\u00a0 Two of three rooms contained prints of Kurt Vonnegut’s drawings, sayings, writings, as well as mementos of his life, photographs, his typewriter and more.\u00a0 The third and smaller room was a facsimile of his library and writing room.\u00a0 Many of the books on the shelves were copies of the same ones Vonnegut himself owned and read.\u00a0 What inspired me most was an artistically rendered timeline of Vonnegut’s life, including wry, sardonic,\u00a0 even sarcastic Vonnegut-esque\u00a0 statements about current events at certain points of his life.<\/p>\n

I purchased a book from the small book\/gift store in the library, a late collection of his essays called, Man Without a Country<\/span>.\u00a0 Here’s a quote from the book that inspires me and exactly explains one of the two reasons I’m writing this blog:<\/p>\n

The arts…are a very human way of making life more bearable.\u00a0 Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven’s sake.\u00a0 Sing in the shower.\u00a0 Dance to the radio.\u00a0 Tell stories.\u00a0 Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem.\u00a0 Do it as well as you possibly can.\u00a0 You will get an enormous reward.\u00a0 You will have created something.<\/em><\/p>\n

The art I practice and encourage is writing (and all things literary), whether a few words of a picture caption, or an essay, or even a lousy poem.\u00a0 I write and memorize poems and host literary parties, and encourage other people to do the same because in the process, I create something.\u00a0 I enlarge my view and life and positively affect those around me.\u00a0 I add something to the world.\u00a0 One reason I write this blog is to encourage other people to try it, too.<\/p>\n

Visiting the Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library was also a literary event, and guess what?\u00a0 Not only was it painless (we hardly spent an hour there), it was fun.\u00a0 We were better for having done it.\u00a0 You can spend hours daily or 30 minutes a week doing something literary.\u00a0 It doesn’t matter the amount of time.\u00a0 What does matter is that doing something literary, living literarily as I call it, makes a positive difference in the person doing the literary thing and in the world around him or her.\u00a0 I suggest you look into what literary figure was born in your hometown, or in the place you’ll be visiting on your vacation, and see if there’s a museum, library, or house you can visit.\u00a0 You’ll be enriched.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Reflecting on Vonnegut<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“…a very human way to make life more bearable…” I am soaking in the second week of a two week vacation.\u00a0 Week one I spent in my hometown, Indianapolis, for a family reunion (all our children, their spouses, our grandson, … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4,39],"tags":[657,656,658],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thelifeliterary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4396"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thelifeliterary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thelifeliterary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thelifeliterary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thelifeliterary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4396"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"http:\/\/www.thelifeliterary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4396\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4411,"href":"http:\/\/www.thelifeliterary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4396\/revisions\/4411"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thelifeliterary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4396"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thelifeliterary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4396"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thelifeliterary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4396"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}