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Delivering Joy
The joy of delivering the first copies of the book to Edith Renfrow Smith.
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“She gets 100%”
I called the lovely Miss Edith this morning. I’ve been on a long anticipated trip to Ireland the last two weeks. The month before the trip was so busy and intense I hadn’t had a chance to talk to her in quite some time. It was so good to hear her sweet voice. She is…
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Not what she envisioned
I had a really thought provoking conversation with Edith’s daughter, Alice, this week that has had me pondering things quite a bit. We were talking about how her mom was feeling about the book and the illustrations. In essence she said that when I first read the story to her mom she loved it. At…
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Bloomers & Squirrel decisions
In my last post I mentioned our new process for bringing Alice and, therefore, Edith into the illustration process. We are barely a week in and I’m so excited about how things are coming together. The picture above is one of the first ones we talked about – bloomers for practice pants, and if you…
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True depictions
I love this illustration. It’s how Erica and I envisioned life feeling in the Renfrow home when Edith was little. I especially love Rudy playing trombone (which he really did but which Edith never liked). The busy house, full of family, everyone doing something. But we were wrong. The Renfrow house would never have had…
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Entrusted with her gift to share
Yesterday I once again had the pleasure of sitting beside Edith and soaking in her charm and wisdom. I travelled to Chicago along with Tamara and three of the Grinnell College students who are doing Renfrow related research this summer. It was a belated celebration of Edith’s 109th birthday. Each of us had prepared something…
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Her voice! Sharing her mother’s wisdom
There is a small group of students doing Renfrow related research with Professor Tamara Beauboeuf at Grinnell College this summer. Part of the project has involved digging into an amazing piece of research done by Stuart Yeager, class of 1982, that resulted in a thesis, “The Black Experience at Grinnell College through collected oral history…
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Walking in her light
This is the power of her attention and regard, and all of you in this room who have had the honor and the joy of speaking with Mrs. Renfrow Smith have experienced this light on you. Grinnell College President Anne Harris, April 26, 2023 In a lovely room in Chicago’s Brookdale retirement community, a group…
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Thinking through details. And a quick trip to see Edith.
Getting the funding I needed is such huge blessing (thank you contributors!) so now my attention has turned to figuring out all the details to make this actually work. After looking into a variety of options, I found a company called Print Ninja that I think is going to work well to print a high…
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Reading with Edith
Yesterday I had the indescribably wonderful experience of sitting next to Edith as I read her the story for the first time. As I read the words of each page, I would look across to see her eyes, carefully reading along in her copy. I was wondering if I would (worrying I might?) see signs…
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The Renfrow Story 