Friday, September 12, 2008

The genre of introductions...

Over the years, I have been asked to introduce keynote speakers to an audience. Writing introductions is a particular kind of writing with a different style. And in the drafting and revision process, the words weaved seamlessly together in creating a snapshot of a life....


Dori Sanders Introduction
The house was new, but an old person lived in it. There were all the visible signs. A young person would have followed the carefully balanced landscape plan of the builder, but these flowers and shrubs were carted in from the old place, planted like browning snapshots in a poorly arranged old photo album, a little ragged around the edges and straggly, like orphan plants with their support systems removed. The plants were very much like the owner of the house, a woman named Mae Lee Barnes. Her children, who had grown up surrounding her like plants in a carefully tended perennial bed, had removed themselves and left visible the now uneven edges of her life....
So begins Her Own Place by Dori Sanders and one can't help but wonder if a little piece of Dori is shared with us through the eyes of Mae Lee Barnes. One can't help but wonder if Dori herself knows all about carting plants and shrubs from one place to another; giving them their own place amongst the shade of the peach trees; honing the uneven edges with great care as they are placed in the soil one by one. One can't help but wonder, if by chance, you happened to drive by the Sander's Peach Shed, and then decided to stop and chat for a bit, what conversations and stories would be shared.
There must be magic for her there, living in her own place, knowing and telling the stories that the peach trees have witnessed for generations. It can be no other way. We, too, share in the stories that she tells. And the voices of generations, we have come to know that Dori lives an ordinary life. Through her writing, deep down we realize that this once thought of ordinary life is far from ordinary when p laced on the empty page.
I believe this is what writing is: taking the uneven edges of a life, crafting them, just being there, waiting, listening, and watching until it is time for them to be planted in the soil of the earth.
And as you listen to Dori Sander's story, imagine yourself in Gaten's hammock stretched between two of the trees, and if by chance, these two trees just happen to be peach trees, listen carefully and you too will realize that its "almost like old times."
I introduce you to Dori Sanders....

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