https://www.amazon.com/Books-Arthur-Turfa/s?rh=n%3A283155%2Cp_27%3AArthur+Turfa
https://www.blurb.com/b/10799783-the-botleys-of-beaumont-county
Poetry and literary fiction/southern fiction for you! Perfect for gifts or for yourself! Thanks!
https://www.amazon.com/Books-Arthur-Turfa/s?rh=n%3A283155%2Cp_27%3AArthur+Turfa
https://www.blurb.com/b/10799783-the-botleys-of-beaumont-county
Poetry and literary fiction/southern fiction for you! Perfect for gifts or for yourself! Thanks!
My fifth-grade class had returned to the classroom from lunch and recess. It was a bright, crisp Friday afternoon in the Monongahela Valley. Our energy had been spent running around. As we settled in our seats, our teacher was crying.
Mrs. Bedogne cried several times a day. Someone gave an incorrect answer, made an error at the board in Arithmetic, or something like that. My first thought was that someone had fallen on the playground and scraped a knee.
But she announced that the President had been shot and was dead. Silence descended over the classroom. About a year earlier John F. Kennedy visited our valley and received a warm reception. The teacher asked who our President now was. My hand shot up with the correct answer.
Three generations of my family met for Friday dinner. Everyone was a staunch Republican, but all were shocked. Not Grandmother Turfa. She complained that her program (soap opera) was not on TV that afternoon. She refused to believe what happened in Dallas. Grandma immigrated about 60 years before from Austria-Hungary (we were Hungarians) with two of her brothers. Her news came from an American-Hungarian newspaper.
One day we will know what really happened on that terrible day in Dallas. The Warren Commission covered up a lot. JFK was hitting his stride in the Oval Office, and we will never know what he might have accomplished, or how the 1964 election could have turned out.
It is a day for reflection, sorrow, and to remember a time when the United States was not so divided.
RIP, Mr. President
I'm very honored and pleased to have three poems here, two of them relatively new. Click on the above link, then click on the next above link to access the first poem. For the other two, at the right-hand bottom side click for my two other poems, one after another.
The first poem is about my paternal grandfather. Inspiration for the second one came from a wine course I watched on Wondrium. And the last came from our Viking Danube cruise this past summer.
Last weekend I went to an exciting event- the South Carolina Writers' Association Annual Conference. I led a Poetry Roundtable with Ed Madden and Glenis Redmond, attended by some outstanding participants who added so much. There were other events, and I was blown away by how many people remember me from last year's event. At the Open Mic I read the first two pages of "The Botleys of Beaumont County," my novel.
Thanks to all who were at the conference, Storyfest, and thank you for reading/listening.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RwCpBPwkuMQ&t=774s
https://www.myscwa.org/event-5216727
I will be on a Poetry Round Table with two excellent Poets Laureate, Glenis Redmond and Ed Madden on Saturday afternoon.
This will be a wonderful opportunity to network, learn, and be inspired. Saturday night will have an Open Mic, and I need to figure out what I will share. Some of the novel first, or a poem?
https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Botleys_of_Beaumont_County.html?id=uIqYzgEACAAJ
The Blurb site is down, but try again. The novel is available only on Blurb!
I know some authors who write memoirs. In my opinion, it's a tricky genre unless the author is gifted, because unless the reade...