Life Lessons

One of Tallahassee's richest cultural entities, the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at FSU, has collected here an anthology of mostly true and some fictional stories and poems, all rich, warm and seasoned.

You get tales: bird dogs sprayed yellow and sulfurous; a white girl walking dusty red clay Georgia back roads and meeting her first black woman alone; an offbeat mom zanier than Lucille Ball; a magical memory with hooting owls echoing across a Suwannee River of the past; the chilling monologue of an old man set on his last revenge. In a poem, the narrator talks about finding an old friend on line with whom she tests recipes for rescue and disaster.

What's not to love about a renaissance of words from a generation which has navigated its way through one world war, the cheery 50s, change-happy 60s, groovy 70s, greedy 80s, rich 90s, and into the next century? They have plenty to show us here.

Mary Jane Ryals

Poet Laureate of the Big Bend

Tallahassee, Florida