National Book Festival

National Book Festival

National Book Festival in Washington, D.C.! I cannot wait. After an exceptionally tough week at work and being treated for strep throat, this is exactly what I need. I’m making plans to listen to John Irving, Judy Blume, Jeannette Wells, and David Wroblewski speak. I’m going to try to get John Irving and possibly David Wroblewski’s autographs, but after my experience last year, I know that anything might happen. In addition to a wonderful day of books and authors, I am going to get the opportunity to meet some of my wonderful book blogging friends! That, to me, is almost more exciting than the books and the authors. So many of them have become my friends and I can’t wait until I can say they’re my friends IRL as well. We’ll all be celebrating at one book festival or another (there’s one in Baltimore this weekend, too!) and then meeting up for dinner at 6. You are sure to hear all about my experience on Sunday. A special thanks to my dear husband Danny for taking one for the team and staying home with the girls tomorrow. I owe you one!

I can't think of a park that didn't provide me with those unexpected thrills. And I think that's the glory of the national parks, that as John Muir said, "It's still the morning of creation. Everything is happening right now." Thank You! The civil War is the most important event in the life of America. Everything that came before it, led up to it and everything after it, is in some small way at least a consequence of it. It's no wonder then, that it holds a universal and continuing appeal. Being a Red Sox fan, you may have asked the wrong person the wrong question, but it is clearly a huge monumental structure that reflects both the glory of the Yankees dominance in this sport and also the excesses of the current age. I've always been interested in films that reveal ourselves to ourselves and I can think of no better subject than the national parks; they are a prism through which one can see refracted the whole history of our complicated United States. The best of us, and the worst of us, is on display in this drama. We've made not a travelogue or a nature film, but a history of complicated ideas and extremely interesting individuals.