Ephemeral

Ephemeral... a pretty word, and poetic. I've always thought it so, and certainly the theme of ephemeral life pervades literature and poetry. Life is ephemeral, it endures for a day only, as it seems. It is fleeting, it is transitory. And yet, in this fleeting, transitory life we human beings can amass a great quantity of ephemera. For, ephemera is what antique-ophiles have taken to calling vintage paper. Old advertising graphics, quaint old Christmas seals, menus from a restaurant that closed in 1905... anything that has acquired enough of a yellowing of age, or has become a generation removed from the day that it was relevant as "news"; anything that has acquired the coveted "vintage" status; that which is "retro," that yesterday we just called old, and threw it out; anything that became unappreciated, neglected, covered with dust and cobwebs; anything that survived in the back corner of the closet, to be rediscovered as a curiosity and called quaint, or funny, or peculiar... these are the ephemera that today's children can appreciate and love in a whole new way. My own soul is drowning in ephemera, but most of it is of the current kind, not yet grown quaint or curious. Right now, it's only dusty. Paper, it seems, has taken over my life. It is due for a much needed sweeping out... On this task, I have begun, and Spring not even started. Yet, I have a feeling that, months and days being ephemeral, as all else, spring will catch me at my task and come and go; perhaps finding my life a little less cluttered. I hope.

Wikipedia on ephemera... 

Manly Wade Wellman, Rediscovered

I have a book of short stories, in which is my favorite ghost story, "Where Angels Fear," by Manly Wade Wellman. The book is Hauntings: Tales of the Supernatural, edited by Henry Mazzeo and illustrated by Edward Gorey. This was a favorite old book. My sister and I had traded it back and forth for twenty years, panicking if we thought one or the other had lost it. (We now have back-ups!)

Because of the short story, I searched for other writings by Manly Wade Wellman, and boy, did I hit the Mother Lode! Turns out, he did quite a bit of writing in and of the Appalachian mountains, though his roots lay more in a curious mixture of African and British culture. I just read What Dreams May Come. I enjoyed it, but feel that I really need to do some research in legend and lore to get the full gist of it. Now I'm reading short stories of Appalachian folklore in The Valley So Low. I've only read two stories so far, but feel richly rewarded. Interesting writer!

Biographical website: http://www.manlywadewellman.com/

Murial B. Williams of LaGrange College

Murial Brittain Williams (1923-1999) was a professor of English literature at LaGrange College, in LaGrange, Georgia for nearly thirty years, retiring in 1992. Her lectures were brilliant and funny ~ she made literature come alive for her students. The Murial B. Williams Award for Excellence in Literary Studies was named in her memory. She was the author of Marriage: Fielding's Mirror of Morality, published by the University of Alabama in 1973. Read the full biography of Murial B. Williams at Southern Muse.