At Penn, At Home: Two Small Damages Sightings

A few weeks ago, I, like most every other voting American ultimately is, was summoned for jury duty. The news came at a treacherous time—so much client work and a book to launch and some overwhelming, long-tail exhaustion—and yet, I wasn't going to shirk the responsibility. We live in a democracy, and jury duty is part of our contractual obligation. 

Still, when my number was not called—when 78 jurors were needed and I had been labeled 86—I was, in a word, relieved. Two words: Greatly relieved. I was able to do, in broad daylight, all that I would have had to do at night.

One of those things involved a trip to the University of Pennsylvania campus, which I was photographing for an upcoming story. By the time I was done with my work, I had just 18 minutes to catch my train, and so I cut through the Penn bookstore on Walnut Street, to get a little closer to Chestnut. I know this bookstore well, spend happy time in it, noticed that the shelves had been rearranged. A large teen fiction section now beckoned. I took the slightest detour, the quickest look. There, to my happy surprise, sat Small Damages, the paperback. I snapped a photograph while a man walked by. "I wrote that," I said. He smiled.

Today I rose in the dark and banged away (again) at corporate work, grateful for the tumbling hours. I didn't leave my chair for hours, didn't live the weather, which aggrieved me. It was late in the afternoon when I went out to the stoop and found a box that had been addressed to me.

And there they were, my very own copies of Small Damages, a book I will always love for all it represents—faith in one's self over many years, collaboration with a beautiful editor and house. And this paperback edition—it's just gorgeous.

Two gifts on two given days.

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in which my nieces (and Serena) take their turn at responsive writing, at Hooray of Books

One of the very great privileges of spending yesterday in Alexandria, VA, at Hooray for Books, in the company of Debbie Levy, family, and friends, was the time we took to write together. Debbie encouraged us to write in the tradition of her mother's poesiealbum—the book of brief holocaust-era letters, urgings, and clippings that inspired her book, The Year of Goodbyes. She asked us, specifically, to think about this:

What about you are you sure your friends or classmates will remember 70 years from now? What do you hope they forget? (We adults were urged to think about what we hope long-lost friends who encounter us now will remember—and forget.)

Since we had been talking about the thin line between fiction and truth, I urged our readers/writers to take something from their pocket and write its autobiography. We heard from paperclips, car keys, phones, and a dollar bill, among other laughter-inducing things.

Here, below, are two responses. The first is by my niece, Julia, who is entering her second year at the Corcoran College of Art and Design; she is a talented photographer. The second is from Claire, whose 13th birthday I helped celebrate earlier this year. She's a big reader, a fabulous student, and all-round athlete.

The Remember? Forget? Exercise/Julia Emma Kephart Roberts

I go to a small small school in the basement of a museum, where you can usually find me in the first cubby of one of the largest darkrooms you've ever seen. There are about 300 students total - smaller than my graduating high school class. I know them all by name and face. I follow them on instagram and tumblr and flickr and every other website imaginable. But older folks be forewarned this means nothing in the actual relationship I have with these people. It also means nothing in regards to what I know about them or what they know about me. What stands out to one person about myself could be completely overlooked or misread by another. Because if you think about it, none of us really know what is remembered or forgotten or even if any of it is true or false, just what we remember about ourselves.

Autobiography of a SmartPhone/Claire Kephart Roberts

There’s a sad but almost happy loneliness the comes with being placed in someone's back pocket and sat on about a hundred times each day. You don’t get to choose what you wear, how you act, or most of all who you are. Everything about you is decided by someone of a higher standard. Although I am smarter then most significants around me I have no choice but to sit quietly and do what I am told. But the idea that my quietness has changed the life of anyone who finds me and my friends is almost remarkable. Significants put their life in us, what we hold is more then a game and social websites, everything typed and every scratch we acquire puts a new, maybe scary thought in our significant's head. Every little thing we do slowly eventually will blur our significant's lines until unreadable and they have no choice but to totally completely rely on us until we ourselves rule them.

And then there's this amazing narrative about our day together, written by Serena Agusto-Cox, who dressed her super-well-behaved little girl in bright pink and shared her with us. Serena has a response to the writing prompt in this post—a beautiful poem. I encourage you to click this link, and read it for yourself.

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