In the fall of 2000 I had the honor of sitting in “the circle” of Jim Hall’s Autobiography class at UK. For those who never shared this honor, it’s difficult to express the affect Jim had on his students. To say that he changed our lives is too easy. To say that his wisdom, advice, and nurturing forced us to change our own lives hits closer to the mark, but still doesn’t get it right.

Inside Jim’s classroom was a safety zone, filled with laughter, candor, tears, admiration, and sometimes heated emotions. He refused to teach in the sterile classroom of the Whitehall Building. Instead, he pulled a few strings and had our class moved to the homey and comfortable Gaines Center. Jim knew that writing, as it should be taught, had nothing to do with chalkboards, desks, or projection screens.

Jim’s classroom was a creative space where any emotion, fear, fantasy, or desire could be expressed without judgment or incrimination. The only catch was that our writing, and our responses, had to be honest.

Jim made us better writers by demanding this honesty, freeing us from the burdens of academic pretension and self-censoring. To be part of Jim Hall’s class you had to “show up” every week, and “showing up” meant far more than just warming a seat. I lived for Jim Hall’s class that fall, and I recognized, even then, that what I was coming to know through my work with Jim was special. What happened behind those closed doors in the Gaines Center remains one of the most formative experiences of my life.

We began that semester as a handful of awkward, shy, and (in my case) insecure students. We ended the semester as a strong, confident collective.

The lasting lesson I will take from Jim Hall is that to be a good writer you must first be a descent human being. He taught that being a writer requires constant attention to your own life, a willingness to engage the fleeting and unknowable, and the humble acceptance that one lifetime will not be enough to get it all right. Being a writer means you have to try anyway.

It’s difficult, now, to imagine the Bluegrass without Jim Hall in it. His commitment to the state, to local bookstores and writer’s groups, to everything that is strong and wise and worldly about Kentucky, and, most importantly, his commitment to the young writers he encountered along his way will be truly missed. If those in Frankfort had any sense the courthouse flags would have sailed at half-mast on the day Jim Hall died, for he was one of the Bluegrass’ finest and we’re all a bit better for having known him

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Whether you know him as the soft faced kid portrayed by young Christian Bale in Empire of the Sun or as the sadistic, technological nihilist popularized by David Cronenberg in the film Crash, few writers of his generation matched the ambition, versatility, and culture relevance of J. G. Ballard.

The late author died last Sunday at his home outside of London, England. He was 78 years old.

For a generation of sci-fi novelist Ballard’s work steered the developments of the genre’s tropes for more than half a century. Among his seminal works are the novel Crash, The Atrocity Exhibit, Concrete Island , and his most famous short story collection Vermillion Sands.

Ballard was a fierce critic of modern culture, and his scathing critiques of man’s submissive fascination with machines led some to view his work as sadistic. Beneath the apparent sadism though, Ballard’s work was about the loss of man—the struggle to preserve humanity in an increasingly mechanized world.

What has struck me most about Ballard over the years is his amazing range. The Atrocity Exhibit is one of the most confounding and difficult books I have ever read. Yet, Ballard departed from his own formula many times in his life to write poignant, and rather traditional, books such as Empire of the Sun and The Kindness of Women. Few authors are capable of such range, and no one that I can think of is able to oscillate between styles as effortless as Ballard did.

He was a true talent and a cultural zeitgeist and he leaves behind a legion of devoted fans who will ensure that his cultural legacy lives on.

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It’s with great sadness that we learn about the passing of Paul Newman. Actor, director, loyal husband, philanthropist, race car driver, innovator—Mr. Newman embodied an old Hollywood sensibility. His leading men were troubled, contradictory, and raw. His charm lasted well into his eighties, and his contributions to the silver screen will be greatly missed.




My husband posted this quote from Mr. Newman on his website. I think it’s a fitting tribute so I’m going to reprint it here:

“The trick of living is to slip on and off the planet with the least fuss you can muster. I’m not running for sainthood. I just happen to think that in life we need to be a little like the farmer, who puts back into the soil what he takes out.”

—Paul Newman

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Last night I was reading the essay “An Entrance to the Woods” by Wendell Berry (if you haven’t read Mr. Berry’s work there really is no excuse). One particular passage in this poignant essay captured my attention, in the way that only a carefully studied piece of writing can capture one’s attention. The passage describes Berry’s trek into the deep woods of Eastern Kentucky, to a remote spot not too far from where I grew up.

“These are haunted places, or at least it is easy to feel haunted in them, alone at nightfall. As the air darkens and the cool of the night rises, one feels the immanence of the wraiths of the ancient tribesmen who used to inhabit the rock houses of the cliffs; of the white hunters from east of the mountains; of the farmers who accepted the isolation of these nearly inaccessible valleys to crop the narrow bottoms and ridges and pasture their cattle and hogs in the woods; of the seekers of quick wealth in timber and ore. For though this is a wilderness place, it bears its part of the burden of human history. If one spends much time here and feels much liking for the place, it is hard to escape the sense of one’s predecessors. If one has read of the prehistoric Indians whose flint arrowheads and pottery hominy holes and petroglyphs have been found here, then every rock shelter and clifty spring will suggest the presence of those dim people who have disappeared into the earth. Walking along the ridges and the stream bottoms, one will come upon the heaped stones of a chimney, or the slowly filling depression of an old cellar, or will find in the spring a japonica bush or periwinkles or a few jonquils blooming in a thicket that used to be a dooryard. Where ever the land is level enough there are abandoned fields and pastures. And nearly always there is the evidence that one follows in the steps of the loggers.

That sense of the past is probably one reason for the melancholy that I feel. But I know that there are other reasons.”

In this brief passage, Berry encapsulates a feeling I often had growing up in Eastern Kentucky. Simultaneously, one can feel a surreal isolation and a deep connection to the bloodline of the hills.


I was listening to my Ipod on shuffle today when it serendipitously landed on a song by Stantford Kelly. Stantford was a bluegrass musician, born in 1898 who played throughout Kentucky and the surrounding area during his lifetime. Stantford’s talent is the stuff of local lore, and most importantly, to this story at least, he was my great-uncle—my maternal grandfather’s brother. Throughout childhood I heard stories about Stantford, but he died six years before I was born so I never had the chance to meet this man of such considerable family legend.

Last year when I was visiting my grandparents, my uncle played a CD he had bought from the internet and I was startled to hear this old, rough, cracked voice come belting from the speakers—a voice both comforting for its tonal proximity to my own grandfather’s voice and startling because here was the real voice of this man who had only existed as a figment of my family’s folklore.

After playing a few tracks from the album, my uncle said “you know his son has a CD too.”

Stantford’s son, Clarence Kelly, is also a bluegrass musician and his CD “The Mountains are Calling” is a solid, well-written, jubliantly played collection of bluegrass melodies. Clarence’s songs speak of home, both literal and metaphoric, with remarkable clarity and grace. I am particuarly drawn to the title track, the story of a young man calling home to ask his father for money to come home after heading north as most restess young men do who were raised in Appalachia.

Listening to these songs of my distant relatives, I feel connected to my roots but also pulled away from my history, my source. Though I have good reasons for no longer living in Kentucky, the Bluegrass is in my blood and being removed from the land leaves a residual melancholy, an ambiguous longing I quell from time to time. Knowing this week that so many outsiders are on their way to the Derby, I can’t help but feel a tinge of jealousy, for like Wendell Berry I have walked in those hills and felt my own blood connection to the land. In the songs of Stantford and Clarence, I am reminded of that place again and of the tie that binds me to the hills.

Take a listen to these tracks, and if you enjoy them please support grass roots music by making a purchase here and here.

I Love my Honey I Do by Stantford Kelly
The Mountains are Calling by Clarence Kelly

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