Just came back to Earth from Heaven
One of my FAVORITE events of the year
took place Wednesday through Sunday
The Virginia Festival of the Book
Each year hundreds of writers come to town
To talk about their books in presentations and panels
There are multiple events in multiple locations each hour
From 9AM to 8PM for 5 days.
The city, the county, local businesses and the
Virginia Foundation for the Humanities
sponsor these
And for the most part they are free
(which is becoming harder and harder to do as you can imagine)
Unfortunately I was
SO INVOLVED
That I took very few pictures.
I attended an event entitled
“Virginia Stories: History and Geography” About The Canal on the James (river that is) and The Great Dismal Swamp and The Great Valley Road of Virginia.
A multimedia presentation and talk by astronomer Stephen Martin about his book
Cosmic Conversations
This was a discussion panel at the main library
all 3 authors did good presentations and readings
Their books sounded very interesting.
The woman on the right discovered
A picture she’d never seen before
when going through her father’s things after his death.
It was her mother at age 13 dressed in traditional Iranian Wedding Dress
standing next to an older man she was obviously not so
happily going to marry.
The author was totally unaware that her mother
had a previous life and marriage in Iran including another daughter.
The book The Good Daughter is the story of the author’s grandmother and mother
and the life her mother ran away from.
I would love to read it but can't add one more thing to
the weight in the RV. Hope I can find it somewhere somehow to read.
The woman in the middle grew up in a strict Amish family
and was forced, as is their custom, to leave school in the 8th grade.
She struggled and struggled with that limitation in her life and
eventually left everything she knew to pursue her education.
My Life With The Amish would also be an interesting and informative read.
The male author wrote about his experience as a secular humanist
dealing with his 3 year old son coming home from pre-school
and asking if he knew who God was and what he did
His book was entitled
Between a Church and A Hard Place: One Faith Free Dad's Struggle to Understand what it means to be Religious (or not)
Another I hope to find on the road.
I attended poetry readings
in bookstores.
Overflowing crowds sitting on stairs
Presentations in City Council chambers
And in Outdoor gear stores.
This is Blue Ridge Mountain Sports
The young woman in orange wrote
Becoming Odyssa: Epic Adventures on the Appalachian Trail. She has now hiked it 3 times since her first hike at age 21 when she had never been backpacking ONE TIME
and DID NO training
for this 2100 mile hike.
Her last Hike done in 57 days
broke the women’s time record for hiking the trail
and this summer
she plans to try to break the men’s record
which will require that she hike FORTY FIVE miles a day.
GOOD GRIEF!!
I attended GREAT talks on Environmental books from authors
who looked much happier when they were talking than here while
they were waiting
The ENTIRE town turns into a bibliophile’s dream
There are Forums on publishing, sci fi, how to write a mystery.
Gatherings of mystery writers
children’s book writers
Book events for children
It is SIMPLY AMAZING
I won’t drag it out by detailing any more events.
Suffice it to say
That this year I
limited
myself to
ELEVEN
Of the HUNDREDS of events
Going on Wednesday through Saturday.
And that took
serious self control
BUT
I’ve actually been able to learn from
My past mistakes over the 17 years
that the festival and I have
been meeting like this
and I know
that I won’t make it past
Thursday if I don’t control myself!!
I pretty much did nothing else
at least Wednesday through Friday
I know, I know,
I should have been
Getting ready to get
ON THE ROAD AGAIN
But I couldn’t help myself
It was here, I was here and I had to do it!
Just couldn’t leave that cookie on the plate.
But then
Life IS all about
Livin’ it
and
Lovin’ it
I had a
GREAT TIME
Doing
JUST THAT.
BUT………………
that wasn’t the only thing happening this week-end…….
(check back tomorrow for the big Equinox/Birthday week-end post)
Do you have an special annual event that you just hate to miss??
