Recently I have read two books back to back about personal journey. One was eat, pray, love by Elizabeth Gilbert and the second I just finished reading tonight. I Hear Voices: A Memoir of Love, Death, and the Radio by Jean Feraca.
Jean Feraca is a name that will be recognized by anyone who listens to Wisconsin Public Radio. The very first Wisconsin Public Radio program that I remember listening to was during my junior year of college as I waited patiently in the rain for a parking spot in the parking lot of the University that I attended. Four times a year, on the equinox and solstices, she holds a poetry circle of the air. I heard that. I was hooked. She took a sabbatical a few years back to write a book and returned to public radio with Here on Earth. A radio program that doesn’t have borders but embraces the world and brings it to the listeners of Wisconsin. It’s brilliant.
I had waited for her book to come out and was thrilled when I was able to attend a book signing and discussion by her at a local bookstore. She’s just as engaging in person as she is over the radio.
The book is organized based on a quotation that she found on her husband’s bulletin board at his work.
Three great mysteries there are in the lives
of mortal being:
the mystery of birth at the beginning
the mystery of death at the end;
and the greater than either,
the mystery of love.
Everything that is most precious in life
is a form of love.
Art is a form of love, if it be noble;
labor is a form of love, if it be worthy;
thought is a form of love, if it be inspired.
Benjamin Cardozo, US Supreme Court Justice,
officiating at a wedding in 1931
And so she starts to unravel the stories of her life. Her brother the American Indian scholar. Her mother that she described as, “a monster who lived well into her nineties”. Their deaths. Two failed marriages and the third that she describes as “happily ever after” to an atheist while she is herself a devout catholic. Her love of poetry and the personal journey she took to learn to write it. She writes richly and without a need for sympathy but with a strength that I hope someday to possess.
“As the real-life woman receded, something larger than life began to come forth, something almost archetypal that I could perceive in this enormous doll with her gorgeous arresting blue eyes that stared and blinked when you sat her up, a doll that wet and had to be cleaned and diapered and dressed and fed and carried about and put to bed … as I toddled around her, and I marveled at how those hours of innocent play so long ago had prepared me now to help my mother to die.”
Jean Feraca in I Hear Voices
I’ve heard lots about eat, love, play but had not heard of the other one. They both sound like wonderfully fascinating books. Hopefully, I will get the opportunity to read them both soon. After Nanowrimo. I don’t really want to start any books til that’s over.
I see something that the two of you (Jean Feraca and you) have in common. You are both astoundingly good at picking short quotations.
As you know, I’m only going to say something about the part that I disagree with and I don’t even really disagree with it but I’m going to say something that sounds like I disagree. Why would you want to be without a need for sympathy? I suppose that I can see it if you really do mean ‘need’ but I don’t think that’s what you mean. So, I think you should replace the word ‘need’ with what you do mean and then the whole phrase needs some kind of reparations.
Hey! I just thought of something. I’ve completely reversed my opinion of historical revisionism. I mean, I’m still think of myself as generally against it but I think that it is one of those general againstnesses that can quite often be gotten over for such a multiple variety of reasons that it might just be better for me to not say I’m against it in general and just say I’m against a certain kind dishonesty.
What radio station is she on? Is this an evening show? Is she better than Dr. Joyce? It sure does seem so. Thanks for introducing me to her! Wow!!!
Jean Feraca’s show – Here on Earth is broadcast on weekdays from 3 to 4 PM CST on the Ideas Network of Wisconsin Public Radio (check wpr.org for more details regarding specific stations). The website for the show (where you can listen to past shows) is http://www.hereonearth.org.
If you are familiar with iTunes, the show also has a podcast – just search “Here on Earth” in the iTunes music store.
I particularly enjoyed the Cardoza quote. Excellent.
[...] second book was a book that complimented eat, pray, love immensely, I Hear Voices by Jean Feraca. Together these books showed me strong women who were facing life altering changes [...]