Some days are Sunny, others are a B*tch

Favorite Author-Nov. 1 2021

Prompt: Today is National Author's Day. Who is your favorite author? Which book by that author is your favorite? Do you have a favorite quote from the author or the book?


I admire so many authors, it is hard to pick just one. I am going to say Pat Conroy because he is no longer with us and he is one of my top ten. I really loved his first book “The Water is Wide” about his experience teaching.on an island that is hauntingly beautiful. There are only a few families on Yamacraw Island, America is a world away. People there live proudly from the fruits of the sea. But now the water is unsafe. Waste from industry threatens their livelihood. They have to learn a new life but their only school doesn’t have a teacher so a young man comes to help them and they teach him about living.

The subject matter from the book really resonates today with all the arguing about education and how we have ruined our own natural resources, endangering our planet.

Two quotes from the book that resonate:

“We Shall Overcome” by Pete Seeger. I remember that moment with crystal clarity and I comprehend it as a turning point in my life: a moment terrible in its illumination of a toad in my soul, an ugliness so pervasive that it seemed my insides were vomit.”
― Pat Conroy
“It was funny how we thought education to be the great gilded key which would solve all problems, eliminate all poverty and disease, eradicate differences between social classes, and bring the children of okra-planters up to par with the children of emperors.”
― Pat Conroy