ONE OF THE 5 BEST MEMOIRS I READ IN 2017

Wife, Just Let Go: Zen, Alzheimer’s, and Love

by Diana Saltoon and Robert Briggs

For quite a while now, I’ve been interested in death and dying. I’ve noticed that most people pretend that death is something that will really never happen to them, and if you experience the death of a loved one, not that many people feel comfortable talking with you about that experience.

Diana Saltoon’s book, Wife, Just Let Go: Zen, Alzheimer’s, and Love, is a rare breath of fresh air in this realm. She not only talks about death and dying, she dives deep into the ocean of fear, unknowing, resistance, and pain to show the reader her journey to acceptance, and ultimately peace, when faced with the terminal illness and decline of her beloved partner, Robert Briggs. In this slim but powerful volume, we also find memories of Robert’s experiences with the Beat poets in the San Francisco scene in the 1950’s, a meeting he had with Eleanor Roosevelt that left an indelible, lifelong impression on him, and his chilling story of witnessing an atomic explosion as part of a US Army experiment.

We also see how Robert and Diana met, fell in love, and accompanied each other on life’s tumultuous path for over three decades.

Wife, Just Let Go took me only a couple of days to read, but it will stay with me for years. It’s one of the most beautiful books I’ve read in a long time.
(Lauren Sapala at: LAURENSAPALA.COM)

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Diana Saltoon Bio

Diana Saltoon has traveled extensively, studied yoga, and in the 1970s developed a program that dealt with modern stress. Her interest in Zen led to a study of Chado, The Way of Tea, as a Zen art and received a certificate of Chamei from the Urasenke School in Kyoto, Japan. Diana became a teacher at the Portland Wakai Tea Association in Oregon before moving with her husband, Robert Briggs, to New York in 2011. They returned to Portland, Oregon, in 2014. A member of Zen communities in Oregon and New York, Diana continues to give presentations, classes and workshops on the Zen Art of Tea. She is the author of Tea and Ceremony: Experiencing Tranquility (2004), The Common Book of Consciousness (1990), and Four Hands: Green Gulch Poems (1987).

Robert Briggs Bio

Robert Briggs attended Auburn and Columbia Universities and served in the U.S. Army during the Korean War. He became a partner in The San Francisco Book Company in 1972 and in 1973 founded Robert Briggs Associates, a group of West Coast consultants to writers and small publishers. The Association was involved in a variety of nonfiction publications including Rolling Thunder by Doug Boyd, Mind as Healer, Mind as Slayer, Kenneth R. Pelletier’s classic book on stress, as well as works by Joseph Campbell, Stanislav Grof, Colin Wilson, and Theodore Roszak. Briggs is also the author of The American Emergency: A Search for Spiritual Renewal in an Age of Materialism, 1986, and Ruined Time: the 1950s and the Beat, 2006. Ruined Time is a cultural autobiography of the Great Depression, World War II and the 1950s. This book sparked various multimedia projects including Jazz and Poetry & Other Reasons, reads written and read by Robert Briggs and accompanied by jazz musicians in performances in Portland, OR. CDs were produced that include Poetry in the 1950s (1999), Someone Said No(2003), My Own Atom Bomb (2005), The Beat Goes On(2008), Love in America (2009) and The Beat Revealed (2011). Robert Briggs was involved in early West Coast jazz and poetry scenes where he performed in San Francisco’s Jazz Cellar. To Briggs, “Jazz is to music, what poetry is to knowing.”

Zen, Alzheimer's, and Love

Saturday, December 30, 2017

One of the 5 Best Memoirs - by Lauren Sapala

ONE OF THE 5 BEST MEMOIRS I READ IN 2017

Wife, Just Let Go: Zen, Alzheimer’s, and Love

by Diana Saltoon and Robert Briggs

No comments:

Post a Comment