What a busy weekend! The six-word memoir thing that I dreaded so turned out to be a lot of fun. Not only was there a good response, now there seem to be a lot more people out there who, like me, keep getting new ideas for their initial six-words. The original idea came from the book, “Not Quite What I Had in Mind, Six Word Memoirs by Writers Famous and Obscure.” Editors Larry Smith and Rachel Fersh put together this anthology of memoirs published by HarperCollins Books. It’s available of course from bookstores and online. Just in case you haven’t had enough yet. The most memorable because of its poignancy, perhaps, might have been Ernest Hemingway’s contribution: For Sale, Baby Shoes, Never Worn.

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There was an casting call in March in Pittsburgh for a movie to be filmed there (starring Julianne Moore) which called for extras to play West Virginia mountain people from the hollers. The casting director mentioned that regular looking children should not attend. You see they were looking for weird looking people: Extraordinarily tall or short. Unusual body shapes, even physical abnormalities “as long as there is normal mobility.” They were particularly hoping to find a 9-12 year old Caucasian girl with an “other worldly” look, preferably an albino or someone with translucent or a very white, thin skin look. The operative word here is: weird or abnormal, as in “inbreeding.” A little offensive, eh?

I spent some time wondering what kind of people showed up. I mean, how many people really see themselves as they appear to others? Even if I had horns growing out the side of my face, would I show up at a casting call hoping for my chance at 15 minutes of fame playing a freak in a sideshow movie? Naturally I was led by curiosity to google and find out what happened. The casting director was fired for her insensitivity to the people of West Virginia. Good.

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Tomorrow is the beginning of another six-week round of Osher classes at the U. Hubby and I are taking six courses each. We’ve really lost our minds! But maybe there will be some interesting things to write about afterwards. In the meantime, things are liable to get hectic for about six weeks, so it may be impossible to post daily updates for Wintersong during that period. We’ll just have to see. So if you don’t see updates often, well . . . you’ll know why. In the meantime, happy blogging to all. I’ll be back.