Leisa A. Hammett

Artrageous Redeux

Our book designer Mary Sweeney; publisher Tim Fields; Trickett Honda's Reed Trickett, ASMT Director Amanda Peltz, project originator, coordinator and author--moi.

Clever copy was intended. Virtual stacks of posts are ready to be published. Only, they ain't about Art. And I didn't do my homework. Waited until the last minute. And this post is supposed to be about Artrageous. Thursday found me flittering about town to half of the galleries that will be featured on this year's Artrageous. Friday I'll take the other half on. And then Saturday night The Fiance and I'll dress up in some Willy Wonka-ish garb and we'll attend the real shindig. Thursday and Friday featured gallery visits were to deliver postcard publicizing our book and our upcoming signings and exhibits, starting with Our Book Launch, Sunday, Nov. 15, 3-5 p.m., L. Greer Gallery, Edge Hill Village. (You're invited.) At 10, Thursday, part of our book team gripped and grinned with Reed Trickett, owner of Trickett Honda in Rivergate who made a generous gift to our book project to help with expenses incurred and to purchase one book per family featured in it. One badly needed manicure later (afterall, I will be signing books Sunday,) plus a sit-down interview with The Tennessean AND a evening speaking engagement and here I am....(We also scored an absolutely fab review in The Nashville Scene today.Not available online, apparently.)

So, I'm resurrecting this from LAST YEAR. Bone tired and behind, I'm calling it quits. For Thursday night and launching Friday's post. Ciao!

Last year's blog Artrageous coverage:

Art-rage-ous. Think about it, said Jeff Rymer of the self-named gallery. When the Nashville CARES Middle Tennessee Aids support and education charity benefit was birthed 21 years ago, there was rage against the plight of the disease swiping precious lives. Now, it's more like Out-rage-ous Good Time while drinkin' Absolut and viewing Fine Art. And a grand, good time it was. It's the one time that this straight gal sees gays so outwardly celebrating in such great numbers within the mainstream of this city. Tasseled dragqueen flappers. Pinstriped fadora-ed gangstas. The theme at this year's was the Roaring 20's. It roared. And the art. The art's all still up there and out there for those who didn't catch the event's Van Gogh busses. And it's worth seeing. Some of my night's faves:

...The rest here.

Plus my City Paper coverage.

More to come.But, first I'll leave you with a taste of this year's Artrageous with the Steven Frenkel's "Relocation Specialist," showing at the uber cool Finer Things Gallery on Nolensville Road. I'd say Frenkel's work, below, is a little bit like my Thursday! And maybe all of my life right now.

Joy&Pain (5-Part Mini-Grieving Series)

The call came. About six days early. Our publisher left the message on my cell phone at noon: "They're here." They're HERE! Our labor of love had come home from NICU--the printer. After nine months of active gestation, in September our team sent our babe to the printer. And now our baby was coming home from the hospital.

It was four hours before I could complete my meetings and commitments in another part of town and arrive at our publisher's office. As I made the drive across town what I did feel was not Joy. I was confused at my "lack" and began to examine my feelings. What I did feel was Pain. My daughter's psychiatrist again had seen the abnormal activity during her neurofeedback session that afternoon. He urged me to call our neurologist and schedule an EEG. This after learning that our health insurance might end early spring after an audit. If we get the boot in March, then we are responsible for paying for all expenses incurred in January and February. (And people DON'T want Healthcare Reform?!) When I called the neurologist's office the soonest appointment I could get was late December and I must see him before an EEG is ordered. And those things aren't scheduled quickly. Sigh. Worry. Fret. Wring hands. That was what I was doing as I made the trek across town. Only, instead of wringing my hands, they clenched the steering wheel.

Once I examined and diagnosed the feelings, giving them names, I traveled a couple more miles. I had put the top down. It was a gorgeous 70 degrees back dropped by lushness of yellow and orange maples. I switched off NPR. I just could not deal with injustices in Iraq right now. I decided to wrap my feelings. I envisioned centering them in a square of thick, silk Japanese cloth, wrapping them up, one side at a time, overlapping the corners over the bundle. Then I envisioned putting that bundle of wrinkled-brow worry on a shelf. This allowed me to tap into the excitement that my first book was hot off the press.

Ironically, I thought later, I had written a book about 18 families living with autism and all the while, I, too, was living with autism. I'd been in this place before.  Knowing that Grace has seizures is not new. We've just been able to not have to treat them until last year and then with a very mild drug. But things appear to have changed. And I thought about my philosophy and what I know is true: It. Will. Be. Okay.  Five years ago, fresh from my divorce, I learned that Grace was experiencing benign myoclonic seizures. I told a friend who had raised a son with autism and had endured way more than I will ever experience on many fronts. She told me this simple truth: "Oh, well. You'll deal." To some that might sound like an unsympathetic response. But D. and I laughed. We both knew she was right. I will deal. And I did. And I will continue.

So. Back to Joy. Our book is beautiful. After months of arduous labor, our photographer-designer-author/project originator & coordinator (that's me) and our publisher had pulled it off. I took it with me to the salon where I purchased hair goo. To the office supply store where I bought felt tip pens to sign it, meanwhile showing it to the tech help who'd rescue my laptop that had survived a summer of writing only to crash two weeks after we sent the book to bed. I enjoyed the oohs and the ahhs, the stunned and admiring looks as I shared it with the staff I knew at both locations....Okay. Yeah. I can do this. I can do Joy. I can. And, isn't that Life after all? A mixture of Pain...but redeemed...by Joy. And that part about the health insurance...it may not happen. It is a possibility, but my thoughts had leaped, soared and astroplaned to a place in the future. A place. That. Does. Not. Exist. And may never. So, I'm going back to the present. And feeling...Joy.

Our book is out. WOOT!

Join us at our Book Launch--a photography exhibit and book signing--Sunday, November 15, 3-5 p.m., L. Greer Gallery, Edgehill Village. More events to follow!

In the Community of Motherhood

Photo: Rory Hamilton

The act of becoming a mother means that some invisible hand of life-emotions reaches down into the very pit of your heart and takes a wrench hold.

You will never be the same.

You have joined the universal community of motherhood and. there. is. no. going. back.

If one is alive, human and fully emotionally formed, there is a deep level of compassion that is permanently implanted in you that elicits tears of compassion at the thought of a child being hurt, another mother losing her babe, another's joyous occasion of giving birth to life just as you have, etc.

You're stuck.

You will be this way forever.

It is a good thing.

I believe this is why women are less prone to violence than men. We have literally given Life. And, it is our innate beings to preserve Life and to care for and nurture it. I love being a woman and a mother.

It is a true gift to be one and to have inside of me this well-spring of emotions shared by mothers around the world. Early into my own motherhood journey, I recall being in awe upon arriving at this shared destination. I can also remember first feeling this fullness of compassion and magical connection to all mothers everywhere. I knew that I had arrived and tapped into something deep, bonding and sacred and that is was a blessed gift not to hold lightly but to honor and to cherish.

Here's to the beauty, the fullness, the decadent brimming heart richness, the lush yummy-ness of Motherhood. And to All Mothers Everywhere....

Mark Your Calendars! You're Invited!

Click on announcement, below, to view an enlarged version or go to: www.fromheartachetohope.org.

They Really Do Come with Instructions

*Photo: Rebekah Pope, From Heartache to Hope series

We're told a lie when our babies are born. It's a lie the doctors tell us. Our grandmothers and mothers tell us. Our neighbors and strangers tell us. They tell us that our "babies don't come with instructions."

I beg to differ.

I think they do.

The instructions are not in a manual. No baby book. They are internal. It's something within us all, male and female. And it's called, simply, intuition.

The problem is that we often can't hear this simple wisdom from within. We can't hear it because we've been taught by our parents, by our culture, by ourselves. Not. To. Listen.

I decided to listen. I thank La Leche League and Attachment Parenting advocates that encouraged me to do so. And I listened again when my toddler was diagnosed with autism.  I had to drown out the noise of the cure du jour. Those that accused me of bad parenting because I chose not to strap my child in a chair at a miniature table in the kitchen and drill her in Skinneristic routines. It was hard. But I'd already learned the value of listening. I was rewarded with a knowing that I was doing what was right for my family. My child.

My child came with instructions. I only had to listen. To her. To my heart. To follow it's message has not always been easy. But by getting still. By listening again and again, I've come home. To my center. And to her heart.

Absolutely. No. Regrets.

*I find it amusing and a bit bewildering when I'm often asked if our book, From Heartache to Hope: Middle Tennessee Families Living with Autism--due from the printer in less than one week--has pictures of Grace and myself. The answer is yes and no. A similar version of this photo, above, but with our eyes open, accompanies the inside and cover bio blubs. Otherwise, I am simply the author (and originator and organizer) of the book project. I am the journalist/storyteller for 18 special families. And their pictures, not ours, capture the reader's eye page after page, their stories, not mine tell of the heartache. The hope. And though it is their stories and not mine, it's our story. Together, these 18 families shared pieces of the autism puzzle. It is their pictures and their words that tell the universal autism story.

Still

 
Boone, N.C., area, summer 2009, DeeLeisa-ous Travels.

In her garage apartment located on the land of a farmer woman, Marianne taught me how to make hot chicken salad. Another girl's weekend sleep over, just the two of us, she also taught me to make a baked chicken breast sandwich. These were exotic eatin's for a college student surviving on cafeteria fare. In our many conversations about our lives that had been and the vast ones that were to come, I sometimes recall her challenging my conservative familial, Baptist culture-infused belief that God had taken away my talent for playing the piano because I no longer used it. She practically yelled at me--in fact, I recall she did yell. A passionate woman she was. Short. Cute and a fiery red head--when I asserted my belief that there was only one mate for a person on this earth. That ONE special someone was out there somewhere for me....My college friendship with Marianne taught me a lot of things. She was a bit, no a great deal more worldly than I. She, already married and divorced. We met when I was a public relations intern and she was the secretary of the neighboring development department of our small East Tennessee Baptist college. My senior year, she went full time as a student, studying music and like me, communications.

The years passed. Nearly three decades of them. Pictures were exchanged back when we still exchanged letters. Her only child is grown now. Mine is now a teen. Last I saw her she was at the Southern Festival of Books sitting and listening to a wild woman poet rant on. She looked up at me as I smiled down at her. She, at first, not recognizing me.

My old college chum, Marianne Worthington's been a college professor for a couple decades now. More recently, she's written a book of poems and now edits a literary journal. She emails me each year and asks me to submit to a publication she edits. I never do. But I am sharing here the richness of what she and her co-editors wrote about their new literary journal's title: Still.

"And about our name:  1.  we believe that to be a writer is to learn how to be still, 2.  The moonshine still is one of the stereotypical images of Appalachia, 3. as a culture, Appalachian has been told for decades that it is disappearing, but we are still here, proud and strong as ever, and 4. James Still, author of River of Earth, The Wolfpen Poems, and many other great works, is the grandfather of modern Appalachian literature and has inspired us all."  

From the Presses: No Tricks And All Treats!

The creative team of From Heartache to Hope: Middle Tennessee Families Living with Autism didn't get dressed up to go to the printer this week of Halloween, 2009. Yet, hurriedly when we got "the call"-- "come now, quick!" we descended from our respective computer desks, west and north, slogging through messy, gray rain and into downtown. A little anxious we were. But like good chocolate clutched in eager hands, our fears melted quickly when we saw that our talented designer Mary Sweeney and her printing consultant, Scott Gerber, and the printers at Pollock Printing had worked just the right magic.

Relieved, a bit teary-eyed and ready to jump for joy at the site of our stash, from left, that's me, Curly; Mary's son, little Super Hero Patrick; standing behind him be-hatted, Mary; draped in her knit cape, Rebekah Pope, our talented photographer and Tim Fields, as himself, always our gracious publisher.

Our goods approved, we nodded to our printer and the presses--they hummed, they buzzed and they ran. No scares a'tal for our happy creative clan:

WOO-HOO and No BOO! Stayed tuned! We're running fast. And hard. Pant. Pant. Can barely keep up.  Don't make us knock on your door, come share in our treat at our Book Launch, Sunday, Nov. 15, 3-5, L. Greer Gallery, Edgehill Village. More events to come and details too. Pull back the drapes, turn on the porch light and keep a watch.

Happy Halloween, Ya'll! And, remember, for Christmas, ho-ho-ho, with our coffee table-style book chock full of stunning black-and-white photography and the moving stories of 18 area families living with autism--with From Heartache to Hope--we've got the goods for all those on your lists so very long!

(Our website is under construction as you read!) Pant. Pant.

Sounding Off. Again.

Thanks to Google Alert, I was reminded that I was quoted for an article in Saturday's Tennessean about the state's inadequate counting system for autism incidence. By the time I landed back at my desk and replied to the just discovered email 24 hours after the Tennessean reporter sent it to me, she'd wrapped the story. However, she called me anyway and then, evidently because I didn't let that deter me from colorfully asserting my opinion about the "hideous" state of being next to last in the U.S. in terms of disAbility service offerings--only above Arkansas--she decided to quote and plug me into the story. Thank goodness my daughter's disAbility gave me the largest flag I've ever had and the life-time job of waving it. The issues serves to help me channel my talents and be more focused in my energies.

Here, the story.

The Church of The Great Outdoors & Wrapping Fall Break

"The Church of the Big Breakfast." When I was married, Grace's father and I attended a church where that's what a spunky young woman in our Sunday School class referred to as her family of origin's denominational lineage as--"The Church of the Great Big Breakfast."

Yesterday morning, Grace and I attended "The Church of the Great Outdoors." And, I can't think of a better way, for me, to get a spiritual lift, a connection with the Great Creator, a fine tuning of my physical-emotional-spiritual relationship with nature, than our time spent in "The Church of the Great Outdoors."

Our day of worship started with a visit to "The Church of the Great Big Breakfast." It was The Fiance's idea to say Grace over a biscuit-, jam- and ham-ladened table here:

Oh, the man who broke my seven-year record of maintaining my 30-pound Weight Watcher's loss and the subsequent 10-15 pounds I've sported thanks to following his taste buds around the country, the world and into his gourmet kitchen.

I knew I was in trouble on our fall break launch when The Fiance's thrill-seeking taste buds led us to Full Moon Bar-B-Que in Birmingham and then proceeded to sample sumptuous fair in Florida's sunny Gulf Coast:

The Fiance. First bite. The Divine Oyster Po'boy at Stinky's Fish Camp

As our lengthy fall break wrapped up yesterday, I was struck by the contrast of going from this:

Grayton Beach

to this:

Natchez Trace Parkway

...on the last day of fall break. Our visit to the Church of the Great Outdoors, which also included a hike in one of Nashville's Great Big urban parks and, at the end of the day, a walk amid skyscrapers downtown for a birthday dinner on Second Avenue by the Nashville's Riverfront , to celebrate one of our newly independent young adult friends living with autism.

For Fall Break. For Church of the Great Outdoors. For Friends. For Family. For the Precious Gift of Life...Thank you. I am Grateful. A-men.

DeeLeisa-ous Travels: Grayton Beach

All photos copyrighted: Leisa A. Hammett

Pink and gold sunsets on ice-blue, rippled waters beyond white, sugary stretches of sand.

Morning walks to Starbucks followed by sumptuous, hot oatmeal laced with brown sugar; quiche-of-the-day and everything-but-the-kitchen-sink cookies at Hibiscus House.

B&B owner Cheri's daily message board.

The saw grass-bordered and lily-padded blue water bays leading to sandy dunes.

Bud and Alley's $$, the bar at The Southern Cafe, the airstream cupcake lady and, as always, an ode to Modica Market...ala Seaside.

 

Per-spi-cas-ity's outdoor bazaar--no trip to Seaside complete without a wonder-and-awe browse thru. Sundog Books: wooden tables bearing stacks of crisp pages begging to be devoured by hungry readers. The ambiance and vibe of Seaside. (Even though they did build succumb to greed and build on the waterfront and copycat Watercolors closing in all claustrophobic-like.)

Bike rides down the board walk. (Follow the rules of the road. PLEASE!)

Grayton Beach. A part of Florida still Southern.

Hibiscus House--a niche in "Old Florida." Every corner and cubby a curious find. It works, Cheri. It works.

Stinky's Fish Camp. The "Great Big Salad" with corn, potatoes, green beans and red peppers." Oyster Po'boys with lip-and-finger-licking roumalade. Santa Rosa Beach.

Grayton: we *heart* you. We'll be back.

And, btw: thems be my boots. On my feets. The same ones that went to Costa Rica post rainy season and shoulda gone to Trinidad. They were perfect for beach walking in the chilly October weather, which ranges from lows of mid-40s to highs of barely 60s.

This is an abbreviated DeeLeisa-ous Travels from our mini-Fall Break to Grayton Beach, Fla. Our travel blog is yet unofficially launched. We have still blogged our travels, but haven't posted but a few online. This trip the laptop was in Nashville while we were in Florida. An operation performed, ripped it's innards and placed them into a new computer home. I'm supposed to rescue it and take it home later today. Then, I hope. I hope. I hope to launch DeeLeisa-ous Travels by year's end. Wish me luck.