Sarah Wrote That | Northampton

Elizabeth Taylor, In Memorium: Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf (1966) →

I updated and expanded my piece on Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? for A Bright Wall in Dark Room’s Elizabeth Taylor, In Memorium:

Elizabeth Taylor gets top billing in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, ahead of Richard Burton. With its release only a few years after their affair on the set of Cleopatra, it may have been difficult from the first not to regard it as being about Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton; as a stormy through-the-looking-glass portrayal of the tabloid versions of them, demonstrating some mismatch of proper, middle-class America and the willfulness, cocktail party wit, indulgence, and failure expected of Hollywood stars (George and Martha, the farthest things from stars, argue about a picture they have trouble remembering).

Reblogged from a bright wall in a dark room.

February to March

UMass grads, see what you’ve done? (Durham, Mihok, I’m looking at you).

via The Daily What: via Forbes

If You’re In Northampton And Thinking Of Living In That Tudorish Building On Prospect Street

Someone has chalked “C.H.U.D.s” on the sidewalk in front of it, with an arrow pointing towards the front door. So, you know. Laundry in the basement might not be an advantage.

Except for Friday evening, the wind has been gusting here for five days. Thursday afternoon some of our graduating writers gave a reading outdoors at the UMass Renaissance Center.

The gold in the valley is tree pollen, and dust from the new furrows.

Through the entire reading (Luke Bloomfield, Jamie Berger, Lily Ladewig, Boomer Pinches, Ata Moharreri, Gabe Durham, Jess Fjeld, Mike Young, and I’m pretty sure I’m forgetting one or two more) a pair of hawks were riding the gusts over the field behind the readers, holding nearly motionless with slight shifts of their wings, dropping down and flapping away.

Since Saturday, things have leafed out so much here that in the early morning and evening, when the sun is behind the trees, there is a quality of light that was impossible at the end of last week, a green-walled light with shadows in new places. As if overnight we’d traveled hundreds of miles while asleep.

Signs Of A Spring Weekend

Scent of flowers with none visible
Kayaks and canoes tied to car roofs
School bus, windows down and kids screaming “Land of 1,000 Dances”