Category Archives: Leara’s Lore

Leara’s Lore #9: Book Signing at AthFest

As summer temperatures climb in Georgia, gardening and getting a much-needed walk must be done in the morning. Afternoons are set aside for writing, editing, and housekeeping, inside with air-conditioning. Saturday afternoon, though, I requested a slot during AthFest to sign copies of Spancil Hill between noon and two.

Leara’s Lore #8: Book Launch in Words and Pictures

My task as a writer is to create images out of words, to set scenes, to choose dialogue that will tell more of the story. I tossed about in my head for several days the argument of is “a picture worth a thousand words.” My resolution is that both writing and photos are important. As I display photos from the book launch, which are wonderful and have meaning mostly for me, I must attach context of the people and the photographers. There is more of a story here than just the photos.

Leara’s Lore #7: Early Writing Mentors

I wanted to be a poet. I wrote poems that I stuffed into the bottom of a tissue box so no one
would read them but me. As a preacher’s daughter, I grew up living in a pastorium and when
there were revivals, the visiting minister would stay in our house. That meant that my brother’s room decorated by the Women’s Missionary Union, housed the visitor and my brother slept on the living room sofa.
Dr. Roy Beaman, a professor at the New Orleans Theological Seminary in New Orleans came as a revival preacher. Dr. Beaman wore glasses that were cracked and I was interested in how he saw things, literally and figuratively. He wrote poetry. I wrote poetry.

Leara’s Lore #6: SPANCIL HILL By Leara Rhodes | Published by Old Fort Press

When I turned in the key to the university office that I had occupied for nearly three decades, I had no idea what my future may hold. I had an academic routine that one could count on. Now I had endless days to fill. I began with a plan.

Leara’s Lore #5: High School Reunion, Check

My father loved Thomas Wolfe and would read his books over and over. I grew up hearing quotes from “You Can’t Go Home Again”:

You can’t go back home to your family, back home to your childhood, back home to romantic love, back home to a young man’s dreams of glory and of fame, back home to exile, to escape to Europe and some foreign land, back home to lyricism, to singing just for singing’s sake, back home to aestheticism, to one’s youthful idea of ‘the artist’ and the all-sufficiency of ‘art’ and ‘beauty’ and ‘love,’ back home to the ivory tower, back home to places in the country, to the cottage in Bermuda, away from all the strife and conflict of the world, back home to the father you have lost and have been looking for, back home to someone who can help you, save you, ease the burden for you, back home to the old forms and systems of things which once seemed everlasting but which are changing all the time–back home to the escapes of Time and Memory.

Leara’s Lore #4: Taking Time to Know Someone

Chris is a handyman who can do anything around the house and yard that one man working alone can do. His work is stellar but getting to know Chris takes time. After five years of working for me, I only knew his name and that he lived in Winder, nothing more. His clothes offer no clues and are meant for outside work. The t-shirts he wears over his thin six-foot frame are pristine when he arrives. And though his work shoes are patched with duct tape, the tape is neat and evenly applied. His grey, straggly beard hangs half way down his chest with equally long grey hair pulled back in a pony tail covered with a baseball cap, never the same cap. He looks the part of a fifty-year-old single man who works with his hands…

Leara’s Lore #2: Students Who Set Goals Often Succeed

Every time my cell phone shows that “Lilly” is calling, I slide open the phone for a conversation that will share insights into art, theatre, travel, politics, friends we have in common, adventures, new projects, and always new ideas. As a student in my feature writing class, she sat on the front row and robustly…

Leara’s Lore #1: In Memory of Christy Gray

Every time I entered her cottage I was greeted with a shout of “Big Love” from another room. And though she was a bigger than life person, both in stature and in spirit, she would appear soon, that was before cancer, or call you to come to where she was once cancer was diagnosed and her movements were restricted. Her positive attitude was contagious…