Shirley Lowry was my first College English Teacher

"I love words almost as much as I love food," Lowry said.

She also has been known to spontaneously slip off her shoes in mid-class and stand on the table to get the attention of her poetry students.

"I feel intensely serious about the subject," she said. "But I don't myself feel serious. I couldn't stop acting silly if I tried."


___

She is, however, an author. She wrote "Familiar Mysteries, The Truth in Myth," a nonfiction book published in 1982. She will take the fall semester off to work on a sequel.

___

http://articles.latimes.com/1991-05-25/local/me-2206_1_valley-college




This is a delightful story about my first college English teacher.

I was just going through some old notebooks and found some letters from her, handwritten during the time I was in Utah having my first hip replacements.

Reading this story brings delight to me.

This is exactly how I remember her.

Sending love for the lessons she taught me about accepting others as they are.

This is about a book she wrote:

Familiar mysteries: the truth in myth

Oxford University Press, 1982 - Social Science - 339 pages
Have you ever wondered why so many heroes--from Odysseus to Tom Sawyer--journey to the underworld? Or why virgin births occur in so many stories around the world?In the first comprehensive view of mythology directed toward the general reader, Shirley Park Lowry tells why we find recurring patterns and symbols in stories that are centuries--or continents--apart. Drawing upon tales ranging from the ancient Middle East to modern North America, Lowry shows how "myths reflect and dramatize ordinary experience, illuminating our deepest and least articulated hopes, fears, and quandaries. Their extravagant plots and images are recognizable because they are the language of our own dreams."Lowry defines what myths are; why they are important; what they share with folk tales, dreams, and fantasies; how we developed a symbolic language and what such symbols as blood, milk, sunlight, and monsters mean; how heroes from Moses and Jesus to Charlemagne and Superman relate to one another; and how myths reconcile us to life's limitations.



http://books.google.com/books/about/Familiar_mysteries.html?id=l54Lp9GTS-MC


 

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