For this episode, Chris and Jake are joined in the podcast studio by Adrienne Fairhall — a UW professor and longtime FrizzLit book club member — to remember Lesley Hazleton, who died on April 29 in her houseboat on Lake Union.
Other FrizzLit book-club all-stars like Johann J. Van Niekerk and Adam Haws make appearances on this episode as well.
To get the sound of Lesley’s voice onto the episode, we play a clip from the Moby-Dick book club in 2020, when Johann and Lesley were talking about the Biblical allusions and humor in the first paragraph of Moby-Dick.
We end the episode with a composition by Adam Haws, “Dance of the Muses,” originally created during the Ovid book club, for a friend of Adam’s named Earle who passed away in 2022, while Adam, Lesley, Johann, Adrienne, and the rest of FrizzLit were reading Ovid’s Metamorphoses.
Adam’s nickname is “the Orpheus of book club.” Not only did he compose the theme song for the FrizzLit Podcast, he composed a whole album of music inspired by the Roman poet’s mythological tales of change.
Lesley was particularly fond of the tale of Baucis and Philemon. Here is Lesley dancing to Adam’s composition “Baucis & Philemon” at Deborah Jacobs’s house:
In addition to being the former Seattle city librarian and the former head of global libraries for the Gates Foundation, Deborah Jacobs is a longtime FrizzLit supporter and volunteer and all-star.
If you ever apply for financial aid for a FrizzLit club, Deborah is the one who administers it. She’s also a better cook, a better gardener, and a more generous friend than you can even imagine.
Most of these pictures on Lake Union come from the time Deborah organized an outing for me on my 40th birthday — a sunset boat ride with fancy snacks — in September 2020. Lesley, Adrienne, and Seattle Arts & Lectures’s development director Betsey Brock were there too.
Lesley playfully quoted Walt Whitman’s “O Captain, My Captain” during her turn behind the wheel that day.
Lesley’s favorite poem — the poem that Adrienne reads aloud on this episode — is “The Windhover” by Gerard Manley Hopkins.
It goes like this:
I caught this morning morning's minion, king-
dom of daylight's dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding
Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding
High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing
In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing,
As a skate's heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding
Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding
Stirred for a bird, – the achieve of, the mastery of the thing!
Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here
Buckle! AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion
Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!
No wonder of it: shéer plód makes plough down sillion
Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,
Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermilion.
Episode 11: Remembering Lesley Hazleton