A poem …

 I'm Beautiful in the Dark

I'm beautiful in the dark, my love.

What is not velvet is silk. My skin. My hair.

Feel and squeeze my citrus fruits. And smell.

Listen to my heart and know my love is there.

I'm beautiful in the dark, my love.

Each bloom in the room is from you to me:

The wallpaper, the coverlet, your bouquet -

Black as they are now -  all underscore love.

I'm beautiful in the dark, my love.

Your bouquet takes its petals off when hugged.

And I take my petals off when hugged.

It's a pretty picture in the mind's eye.

Everything is black, my love, my heart is black.

You'll deal with it, I expect, because of my night-beauty

Jennifer Knox

My favorite conductor …

… Bruno Walter, a Conductor Who Found Truth Through Beauty - The New York Times.

Writers often dignified Walter with spiritual metaphors — the author Stefan Zweig compared the beam on his face while conducting to “the countenance of the angels when they look upon God” — and it is revealing of his artistry that they were exactly what Walter aspired to achieve. For him, the Germanic music from Bach to Strauss was pure, uplifting, redemptive. It offered an “unchanging message of comfort,” he wrote in his memoir “Theme and Variations”; its “wordless gospel proclaims in a universal language what the thirsting soul of man is seeking beyond this life.”

Greg Maguire kicks off The Gathering

What do bumblebees, Antonin Dvorak and Babylon have in common?

Thanks to the inventive mind of Gregory Maguire, the answer to this question is not "Umm, I'll just go and get you a doctor now, OK?" Instead, not-so-coincidentally, the answer is "Time, Place and Story," which happens to be the theme for The Gathering this year.

Greg kicked off this year's event with a very funny and entertaining lecture entitled "Backyard Babylon." In addition to bees and Dvorak, it also brought together elements from the work of each of this year's featured authors, Greg's own writing, autobiographical anecdotes, and numerous other seemingly disparate topics in a highly informative thesis. While defining his views about the relationships between time, place and story, Greg also provided fascinating insights into the genesis of his Wicked Years series.

Greg's lecture was the exclamation point on a delightful opening evening that started with a meet and greet on the Keystone College campus and continued on to a convivial dinner shared by authors, guests and staff. After dinner, brief welcomes and introductions were followed by the invocation, highlighted by a lovely Hindu dance performed by Sujata Nair Mulloth.

All in all, it was a fantastic start to a highly-anticipated weekend. I can't wait to see what tomorrow brings!