Last Class (Until May...)

Memories of Winter in Childhood by Tiffany Teske

Tonight was the last class in the memoir course I have been taking at the Banff Public Library. It has been a fabulous experience! I am very impressed with the knowledge and teaching skills of our teacher, Monica Meneghetti. She is a local writer who has taught this class before. I have always written, but had never tried memoir, and I am so glad that I decided to attend this class. What blows my mind is that the library covers the cost of these classes in their programming budget, so I feel I have been given a gift to have learned so much for FREE! The six week class allowed us to create a first draft of a piece. Mine is about the 6 hours I labored while giving birth to my daughter. It has been very moving to write and is very special to me. It is no where near finished, but I will work on it a bit in coming weeks, and then I plan to take the second part of the course, which is 4 weeks long, and starts in early May. I may not make it to all the classes, since I am due to give birth to another daughter in early June, and there is a vacation week in there, but I am looking forward to learning as much as I can.

One of the highlights of the class, besides meeting several local people whom I have passed in town, but had never met, was listening to a radio program that Monica brought in about memory. I usually work on several photography and mixed media series at once and memory is always the unifying theme in at least one. I love to learn about memory. If you are interested in listening to the program is it available on the Radio Lab website. It is called Memory and Forgetting.