Dr. Kellie D. Brown
@kelliedbrown1.bsky.social
Professor of Music, violinist, conductor, writer, poet, Holocaust researcher, UMC lay minister kelliedbrown.com
I’m the kind of person who pays attention to signage. I like to know where I am and what the rules are. What I most want to locate is refugia, a kind of safety that is beyond physical, but is deeply spiritual and healing. kelliedbrown.substack.com/p/searching-...
Searching for Refugia and Following the Signs
A poem and flash CNF
kelliedbrown.substack.com
What does it mean to be deeply connected to a particular place, to be embedded in it, over an extended period of time? This is one of the questions that occupies the amazing work of Canadian artist Marlene Creates. kelliedbrown.substack.com/p/embeddedne...
Embeddedness
Memory and Place in the Work of Artist Marlene Creates
kelliedbrown.substack.com
I'm grateful to St. Katherine Review for publishing my poem "Blessings for Cleaning Your Parents' Hoarded Kitchen." www.stkatherinereview.com/post/blessin...
Blessings for Cleaning Your Parents’ Hoarded Kitchen
Blessed are you who vie with ants and all trespassing pests for yours is the companionship of angels.
stkatherinereview.com
My parents just died in the past 4 months, aged 80 and 82. This giant generation of baby boomers have hit 80 ish and are dying. Just like Dolly Parton and Annie Dillard. God help us. It's going to be mass loss.
Name a non-LOTR character who could resist the One Ring
aaron boothby @ellipticalnight.bsky.social · 2mo agoName a non-LOTR character who could resist the One Ring (if you feel like it)
This is my reflection on losing Dolly Parton and Wendell Berry. It is also about what place means in our losses, specifically how does the location where we hear the news of loss impact us. Is that place forever marked? kelliedbrown.substack.com/p/the-sticki...
The Stickiness of Loss
How Grief Roots Us
kelliedbrown.substack.com
Dolly had a unique capacity to speak in a universal way that made people from all walks of life able to resonate with her music and spirit. In 2019 I took a group of university students from East TN to Europe. On a bus in Greece at 4 am, we were singing Jolene. That is the power of Dolly.
What does it mean to find closure when trauma and complicated grief are present? What windows can we push open to let new life flow in? I'm searching for those answers. kelliedbrown.substack.com/p/closed-doo...
Closed Doors and Opened Windows
Reflections on Complicated Grief
kelliedbrown.substack.com
“How fragile we are, between the few good moments.” These words of Jane Hirshfield in her poem “Vinegar and Oil” come to mind often. Life throws so many punches. This morning, 2 students at the university where I teach were killed in a cycling accident. Lord, why so few good moments?
As I read about the drought exposing hunger stones along European rivers, I began to think about metaphorical hunger stones in our own lives and memorial cairns. I think stones have much to teach us. kelliedbrown.substack.com/p/lessons-fr...
Lessons from Stones
What we can learn about place markers and hunger
kelliedbrown.substack.com
My poem “Render” was published today. It is about the fear that all creatives have that one day the well will dry , & we’ll have nothing to say. It offers solidarity with that fear & a hopeful path during those fallow times. I hope you'll take a moment to read it. substack.com/home/post/p-...
Render
Author Kellie Brown
substack.com
Memoir writing has you thinking about all kinds of things, such as what’s calming & what’s frightening. The ocean is that type of place for me, memories & mystery, safety & danger; a good metaphor for a life that includes complex grief and trauma healing journeys. open.substack.com/pub/kelliedb...
Dolphins and Warning Signs
Trauma Awareness and Healing
open.substack.com
Yuck. I feels like I've stepped into a jungle this morning. This humidity can go to hell.
With the heat index soaring, it's a perfect time to look forward to fall. I've already seen pumpkin decor making its way into stores.nThere is a reason why Summerween is a thing. So, enjoy this reflection on a quirky film from 1979. open.substack.com/pub/kelliedb...
Love at First Bite, a GenX film
The nostalgia of Halloween in June
open.substack.com
What does it mean if you look at a clump of leaves, and it looks like the face of Lady Elaine Fairchilde? Asking for a friend.
I'm needing to sell some high-end costume jewelry and carnival glass from my mother's estate. Does anyone have advice about whether Ebay or Etsy is the better place? I appreciate any advice you have.
Today is my late mother's birthday and my father's second Father's Day in memory care. It's a lot to process. I hope I can be gentle with my tender self.
I'm celebrating the sixth anniversary of my book by highighting the story of Herbert Zipper. A man of great resilience, he survived two concentration camps and used music to bring comfort to others and as a spiritual resistance to hatred and prejudice. kelliedbrown.substack.com/p/the-sound-...
The Sound of Hope
Holocaust Stories of Resilience and Spiritual Resistance through Music
kelliedbrown.substack.com
I'm not much of a photographer, but the glory of nature did all the work.
I'm choosing to believe that this "Uncle Yam" is making fun of the orange one.
“I’m inclined to think that we’re all ghosts…It’s not only the things that we’e inherited from our fathers and mothers that live on in us but all sorts of dead things…they’re not actually alive in us, but they’re rooted there all the same.” —Henrik Ibsen, Ghosts
If there was one magical power I could have, it would be to summon the book I need and have it fly from my shelves or stacks into my hand. (A lot of writing time has been lost today trying to find the books I need to be in conversation with.)
"The people we love are built into us. Every day I am suddenly aware of something someone taught me long ago—or just yesterday—of some certainty and self-awareness that grew out of conflict with someone I loved enough to try to encompass..." May Sarton, The House by the Sea #SundaySarton
I can't stop thinking about this quote from Arundhati Roy's recent memoir, Mother Mary Comes to Me. “All personal achievement comes with a sense of foreboding. On the occasions when I am toasted or applauded, I always feel that someone else, someone quiet, is being beaten in the other room.”
A poem and love letter to trees. How they sustain us, teach us, and point us to those holy thin places. open.substack.com/pub/kelliedb...
The Pedagogy and Poetics of Trees
And Thin Places
open.substack.com
#SundaySarton "Because I am thinking so much about the past these days I have come to see that the past is always changing, is never static, never 'placed' forever like a book on a shelf. As we grow and change, we understand things and the people who have influenced us in new ways." (p. 95)
#SundaySarton “I spent the night at Carol & Jim Heilbrun’s, in their spacious old apartment on Central Park West … As we sat & talked, I felt perfect happiness & accord … glanced now & then at Duncan Grant‘s self-portrait on one wall & Vanessa Bell’s self-portrait over the mantle.“ (p152)
