Recent personal piece to accompany an episode of the “News from Lake Wobegon” by Garrison Keillor. This was from the episode on March 28, 2009, in which the most beautiful girl at the high school receives too much attention from boys after deciding to go to prom alone.
Give it a listen sometime on iTunes. Mr. Keillor is pretty much a radio genius, and every week he shares funny or thoughtful or bizarre stories about a fictional town whose inhabitants he knows so intimately that their tales somehow have impeccable continuity over many years. What’s probably most amazing is that his stories are, for the most part, spontaneously generated.
Meet Jo, from Little Women. Louisa May Alcott’s tale has always been a favorite of mine, both on film and on the page, although her book particularly speaks to me. Each character is so real, so beautifully crafted, that the reader can’t help but relate to them, and I seem to find a piece of myself in each of the four girls. I have been wanting to paint their portraits for quite a while now, and Jo is the first one up.
