Lift

Excellent album by a very talented musician from Nova Scotia.Atlantic Canadians are not as over hyped,nor overrated as their counterparts in Nashville and Austin[yes there are some talented acts in both cities,there again so has Birmingham and Wolverhampton!}i have been playing this lovely cd over and over and i can't wait to see Mr.Gunning in February and March,in the UK along with the legendary Ennis Sisters from S.John's, Newfoundland. More Dave,more svp.

A very well done album easy to listen to and I would recommend this to anyone

While this book may perhaps on its face seem to be talking primarily to mothers (and is certainly being marketed as such), as a dad of two i can say that it resonated with me just as much as it did with my wife. Okay, well, maybe not the part about early menopause...but just about everything else. This book is the perfect gift for ANYONE who is a parent (or wants to be) and serves as an inspiration for all of us to write a letter, or a series of letters over time, to our kids. Kelly is as sentimental as someone can possibly be without ever becoming implausibly and nauseatingly mushy and uses humor and everyday details to keep the book incredibly grounded and real. This book is about the epiphanies that occur within the context of our everyday lives with kids and shares an appreciation for the magic and fragility that are there every day even when we don't notice them. It also is a reminder that we really are just renting our kids for a very short window of our lives.

If you like Dave Gunning, you will like this, all around worth buying

I fell in love with this author, through her stellar ability to create a visual story with words, bring you to tears, then make you laugh so hard you get stitches, she became like a close family friend. I feel like she lives around the corner and I’m waiting for her to call with details about her latest adventure. Her words took me back to some of my childhood experiences that were similar, I felt like we shared the same mother. Ms Corrigan, please write more stories for me to get lost in and to treasure forever!

I read Kelly Corrigan’s second memoir, Lift, in one sitting, and wished it would go on forever. Lift, a pastiche of Corrigan’s family life told through several insightful, elegant, sometimes heart-wrenching vignettes is imbued with a perception and candor that is Corrigan’s hallmark. This is a woman who knows what’s important in life, who knows when to ask questions, when to take notes, and when to put the pen down. It was Corrigan’s deposition-like questioning which earned her the title of the book. During one such session, a friend’s husband who loves to hang glide revealed that lift is what one gets when, while hang gliding, you encounter an upward force that counteracts the force of gravity, a change in the direction of a moving stream of air. In the sport of hang gliding, it’s your sole method of propulsion. His description, more dangerous than his wife knew or had cared to admit, and Corrigan’s retelling of the moment her friend realizes the danger her husband periodically subjects himself to is demonstrative of Corrigan’s brilliance as a writer. In a sentence, a single snapshot of their lives, she reveals the scope of their relationship, exposing both strength and vulernability with a simple turn of phrase. This ability to weigh life in words and to make it universal is the mark of a fine writer. Lift is ostensibly a letter to Corrigan’s daughters, something for them to have when they reach a certain age, or maybe one day when their mother is gone. Perhaps it was Corrigan’s bout with breast cancer that started her thinking about things. She chronicled that experience, interlaced with her own childhood stories, in her first book, The Middle Place. Or maybe it was the horror of ovarian cancer which cost her not only her ovaries, but the chance for more children, something she says she may never get over. Whatever the genesis, Corrigan’s cancer allowed her to let people in and do for her as she never could before. As a result, she doesn’t look at life the way most people do. She knows that the long haul could be short indeed, and she views each moment through her close up lens -- Corrigan is also an excellent photographer -- knowing that it’s a crap shoot, that we could get just this one day or 10,000 more, and soaking it all in while it’s there in front of her. I met her briefly at a Jr. League Author’s Luncheon in Lancaster, Pennsylvania; the woman has an uncanny ability to connect with everyone she meets, size them up in a few seconds and give them exactly what they need -- no veils or hidden doors, just open communication and full on love -- as if there’s not a moment to lose. At first you think she might be BS’ing you, or that maybe she’s looking at the world through rose-colored glasses, but then you realize she’s popped out the lenses and there’s nothing obstructing her view. Plus, like her writing, she’s funny as hell. Lift is not a memoir in the traditional sense, but a brief historic family interlude told through its still strong, still beating heart center. You can read Lift in an afternoon, but like Corrigan herself, you’ll remember it for a lifetime.