Fallish Thoughts

Educated, a memoir by Tara Westover, has certainly piqued my interest. It reads in the vein of Glass Castle  This is the true story about how one girl was born and raised in Idaho by parents who didn't believe in any sort of formal education and how she rose above. It’s about being motivated, being a self-starter, realizing the bigger picture and not letting family, fears, or other outside influences determine who you are and who you will always be. 

Tara Westover is an American author living in the UK. Born in Idaho to a father opposed to public education, she never attended school. She spent her days working in her father's junkyard or stewing herbs for her mother, a self-taught herbalist and midwife. She was seventeen the first time she set foot in a classroom, and after that first taste, she pursued learning for the next decade. She received a BA from Brigham Young University in 2008 and was subsequently awarded a Gates Cambridge Scholarship. She earned an MPhil from Trinity College, Cambridge in 2009, and in 2010 was a visiting fellow at Harvard University. She returned to Cambridge, where she was awarded a PhD in history in 2014.

Educated would be a great book club selection for discussion. 

So many of Mary Oliver’s poems are about her observations of and interaction with the natural world. I thought this poem was appropriate considering the leaves are starting to change. I liked this poem because of the sense of anticipation, of fall coming to full bloom. 

Song for Autumn
by Mary Oliver

In the deep fall
don’t you imagine the leaves think how
comfortable it will be to touch
the earth instead of the
nothingness of air and the endless
freshets of wind? And don’t you think
the trees themselves, especially those with mossy,
warm caves, begin to think

of the birds that will come — six, a dozen — to sleep
inside their bodies? And don’t you hear
the goldenrod whispering goodbye,
the everlasting being crowned with the first
tuffets of snow? The pond
vanishes, and the white field over which
the fox runs so quickly brings out
its blue shadows. And the wind pumps its
bellows. And at evening especially,
the piled firewood shifts a little, 

longing to be on its way.

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