The Butterfly Hours Memoir Project: NAME

For 2019 I'm running a year-long series on my blog in which I share my responses to the writing assignment prompts found in THE BUTTERLY HOURS by Patty Dann.

I welcome you to join me, if you like! I've divided the prompts by month, and the plan is to respond to 3 (or so) a week. For some of these I may write poems, for others prose. The important thing is to mine my memory. Who knows where this exploration will lead?

For links to the prompts I've written on so far this year, please click on The Butterfly Hours tab above. 

This month's prompts include: mail, moon, mouse, moving, museum, music, music lesson, name, necklace, neighbor, nightgown.

NAME

I've written here before about my name.  So today I will share with you two name-related things:

1. Each year I download the audibooks offered for free as part of the summer SYNC program. This week I listened to BECOMING KAREEM by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Raymond Obstfeld, performed by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. The whole book is framed around Kareem's name-change and how this was how he "became" himself, instead of allowing himself to be defined/named by others. I LOVE this book. It's one of those I'd probably never have read, if not for SYNC. And isn't that the beauty of a program like this? Accessibility, availability... it matters.

2. I've been kind of obsessed with one Alexander von Humboldt ever since last year when I read THE INVENTION OF NATURE by Andrea Wulf. More things in the world are named after Humboldt than any other human... and yet many people have never heard of him! If you haven't heard of him, do pick up this book! You'll be fascinated by Humboldt's adventures and discoveries... and now there's a also a (giant!) graphic novel that offers an account of his 1799-1804 expedition to South America. Check it out!