How I love connections! This book contains a beautiful poem and a scholarly article both inspired by F.C. Frieseke's painting "The Garden Parasol." F.C. Frieseke was my grandfather; the primary figure in the painting portrays his wife, my grandmother Sadie. In this same collection, I found a wonderful poem by James Applewhite, who was my poetry teacher at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. His poem was inspired by Winslow Homer's painting, "Weaning the Calf." I had "chosen" this painting as the one I would most like to take home from the museum (their Frieseke is too big for my condo)!

For several years I lived across the street from another author represented in this book, Fred Chapell, who was then a professor at UNC-G. Although I was not priviledged to take any of his courses, I did enjoy a poetry reading of his in 1973.

I recommend "The Store of Joys" to all lovers of visual arts, poetry, literature, and interdisciplinary studies. The reproductions are excellent, and the authors' reactions add so much to our appreciation.

Please visit my website on F. C. Frieseke at: go.to/frieseke

No one in northeast Alabama will ever forget Palm Sunday 1994. When deadly tornadoes ripped through northern Calhoun County, killing nearly two dozen people, a spring Sunday dedicated to beginning the holiest week of the Christian year became instead a stormy day of pain and loss. And yet, as the Rev. Dale Clem's memoir "Winds of Fury, Circles of Grace" demonstrates, the terrifying storms could not blow away the faith and devotion that would testify in no uncertain terms to a love and spirit that transcends disaster and death.

As the Rev. Kelly Clem led Palm Sunday services, including a children's pageant in which their 4-year-old daughter Hannah took part, Dale Clem was hundreds of miles away, leading a youth group on a spring break service trip to Oklahoma. The first report Clem received was sketchy, a message received from a cell phone call. "There's been a tornado," he was told. "It hit your wife's church... Kelly is in the hospital, the girls are okay; you need to call home." In the time it took for him to find his wife - interminable time - fear grew. No one had news about Hannah. Finally he was able to speak to Kelly, who told him: "Hannah is dead."

It was the beginning of a long day, a long week - a long year - of tears and mourning. "Winds of Fury, Circles of Grace" chronicles that year with touching honesty, neither shying away from sorrow nor forgetting joy. Clem captures the grief of a small congregation in a small town, where relationships are strengthened both by proximity and faith. He recounts unpleasant moments, such as hurtful and hateful notes received from zealots equating Kelly's ministry and the priesthood of women to Sodom and Gomorrah. And he shares many happy memories of Hannah - "Have I ever told you that I love you?" he would ask Hannah and her younger sister Sarah, and Hannah would giggle, "Oh, Daddy, you tell me that all the time."

The spirit of Hannah Clem is ever-present, dancing through these pages as she did through her life on earth, helping her father tell his tale of loss and redemption. Clem intersperses the chronological account of that Holy Week in 1994 - a week in which the message of death and resurrection resonated among the Piedmont hills - with good basic advice on confronting and accepting grief and healing. He begins this task with a quote from T.S. Eliot: "I said to my soul, be still, and wait.../So the darkness shall be the light,/and the stillness the dancing." He speaks to everyone who has known the darkness of death - encouraging by example, unafraid to recount his moments of weakness and weeping and glad to witness to a faith in life and in Christ which ultimately led both Clems through the valleys and shadows of the first year to a place of new hope and understanding.

As everybody knows, Hery James is not an easy writer. His appeal is very difficult and complex although it doesn't read very old-fashioned. The story is very interesting and timeless, because it deals with passion, money and betrayal. The books follows Kate Croy and her beloved Merton Densher when then both get involved - in different degrees and with different interests- with the beautiful rich and sick American heiress Milly Theale.

Most of the time, the book kept me wondering what would come next and its result and the grand finale. But, that doesn't mean I was fully understand its words. As I said, I was just feeling what was going on. As a result, i don't think I was able to get all the complexity of Henry James. Maybe, if I read this book again in the futures, it will be clearer.

There is a film version of this novel made in 1997, and starring Helena Bonham Carter, Allison Elliot and Linus Roach, directed by Iain Softley. Carter is amazing as always! Kate is a bit different from the book, she is not only a manipulative soul, but, actually, she is a woman trying to find happiness. One character says of Kate, "There's something going on behind those beautiful lashes", and that's true for most female leads created by James. Watching this movie helped me a lot, after finishing reading the novel.

The text follows the fascinating development of a manipulation: Milly Theale, an American woman, enters the London scene, endowed with prodigious wealth, youth, and beauty, and several characters vie for her affection. It's a standard James plot in that way. Much like Portrait of a Lady, the wealthy American is exploited by her European acquaintances. Kate Croy convinces her lover Merton Densher to take advantage of Milly's interest in him, and to go so far as to attempt to marry the young American for her money. She is, after all, fatally and tragically ill. James brilliantly depicts the struggle between Densher, Kate Croy, her powerful Aunt Maud, the piquant Susan Shepherd, Sir Luke, and Lord Mark, and his characteristically enigmatic ending does not disappoint. James manages to breathe life into these odd characters in a way that so few writers can: his genius is for complex character, and this book embodies that genius at its height.

The trouble with the book, however, is that it does not qualify as a "light read." The pace is incredibly slow - deliberately slow, of course. It is a novel about decisions, and the development of those decisions constitutes the bulk of the novel. James's prose does lack the terseness of a Hemingway, but the latter writer often fails to capture the nuances that James so elaborately evokes in his careful prose.

James, like Faulkner, is not for the faint of heart. Some of his work is more accessible; readers in search of a more palatable James should look to Washington Square, What Maisie Knew, or his popular masterpiece, The Turn of the Screw. This novel does not fit easily into a category, and its principal interest is that very quality of inscrutability. It's not really a "British" or an "American" novel but contains elements of both. It's not "Modern" or "Victorian" but both. Originally published in 1902, it's also not easy to include him in either the 19th or the 20th century. He appears to be writing in both.

In short, then, it's not a light-hearted novel and the prose can be challenging at times. But I believe that the effort of reading this book is well rewarded.

This book, about an aging southern poet/professor who brings his only son, suffering from AIDS, back from New York to die at home, is a beautifully written and touching portrait of the characters involved. But more, it is in many ways the typical 'Southern' novel, where the tragic outcome and any hope of redemption are all bound up with family history, race, sex, friendship, the 'wages of sin' and the weight of history. There is a sensibility at work here, as in Peter Taylor's work, that seems, in its particular experession, uniquely southern but manages to be, in its effect upon the reader, universal.

This is a very moving book. The only problem I experienced in reading it was a slight twitch whenever the main character would speak of his own early same sex experiences. In these scenes, the language Price put into the protagonist's mouth seemed artifical and strained, and the euphemisms chosen to refer to body parts and sexual activity were so strange that even a Victorian would have laughed at them. Nevertheless, the story engaged the reader from the beginning and despite the inevitability of the outcome, maintained a strong emotional hold. I was deeply moved by this book, which, like the best of southern writing, left me questioning much in my own life and times.

Now, as for believability, literature is a tool for the communication of ideas, just as color and light are to a painter. Would you tell Picasso that it is simply not believable for a woman to have two eyes on one side of her head? I would encourage anyone who has questions about the role of believability in literature to read Maupin's The Night Listener. He clarifies that literary truth transcends the believability of the narrative.

In summary:

1) In literature, it is perfectly acceptable to "tell" versus "show" if "telling" is the best way to communicate your ideas.
2) In literature, believability is irrelavant if the amalgamation of words effectively communicates the writer's ideas.

The characterizations are complex and sometimes it seems that there are too many characters to keep track of, but Mr. Kramer manages to pull it all together in a Book that reveals a multi-faceted mosaic of all the faces and souls and all the tensions in an environment frought with everything but enduring love. Reminiscent of LORD OF THE FLIES, except in reverse, this Book shows the struggle of an evolving community, lost at the time in its own excesses and looking for love in all the wrong places, set up by destiny for the plague to hit. It is a must read for every member of our community, new or old.

FAGGOTS provides an excellent opportunity to learn from history.

Joe Barri