October 3rd to 6th - Washington, D.C. and Baltimore, MD

In the middle of the Southern leg, I flew north for a booksellers convention in Baltimore, a party in D.C., and a couple of things in New York (work, an engagement party, etc.).  

Arriving in D.C. on a Sunday morning, Scott -- whom I've known for several years through a very old Memphis friend -- met me from the train and we headed to the grocery store while her husband was out with their boys.  

Scott is one of the funniest people I know, archetypal of the "Northern wits, Southern charm" mode.  If you ever see that she has written a book, as the saying goes, 'buy two, give one to a friend.' 

Scott and Porter graciously offered to host a party for Museum Legs that Sunday afternoon.  As became immediately clear, as we trundled through the store, Scott subscribes to the same school of party hosting I do: cook for eighty if you've invited twenty, when in doubt have too much alcohol.  As an inspired addition, Scott also advertised that there would be a babysitter.

With our cart full of wine, we also worked on the fact that it was Scott's week to bring snacks to Mac's school.  The previous year, she had gotten a note from the teacher afterwards saying "Good snack."  As Scott explained (and you have to hear this in Scott's dry wit and perfect delivery), taking care of kids doesn't provide a lot of concrete positive reinforcement so she was hoping for another "good snack" this year.  

The party left the "good snack" hurdle in the dust as Scott kept producing things like homemade pimento cheese and magic nutty bars and the ability to give a cream cheese toping on a cucumber slice a scalloped edge.  

After lounging and snacking, and making absurdly last-minute invitations to a few people (including my brother's mother-in-law Bilha who made a hugely strong showing by turning up on an hour's notice), we got ready to receive guests.  Here we are with Canon, who, it was pointed out, occasionally looks European.

Here's Mac preparing for the theatre piece he had planned for babysitter time:

Guests included, Wade of business school, back from London, with Connor:

And whole other crews, including my very old friend Charlotte, and her friend David, 

the lovely Anabeth, 

and lots of new and interesting people, including a somewhat professional level athlete who laughed awfully hard at my story about playing for a team that once got shut out in a *basketball* game.  

Scott asked me to give some remarks, and then we had Q&A, and sold books in a Tupperware Party format, thanks to Scott's lovely display.  She even had a plate stand:

Baltimore. . . 

The next day was the North Atlantic Independent Booksellers Association meeting, one of those real and fascinating lenses onto the nuts and bolts of how books are sold.  It is a conference for owners of independent bookstores.  

Publishers and distributors of books set up booths.  I was slated to sign a huge stack of books and chat with people (that same energy of retail, the delicate dance of providing enough but not too much information).

Scott and Canon came along as my PR and assistant PR. (Scott, in fact, used to be a literary publicist.)  Canon helped us meet people, like a nice guy named Charlie from Simon and Schuster, at lunch, as Canon explored every heating grate and unstable surface of the sandwich shop. 

I got to know some of Hol's sales reps, who were super interesting, and toured around a few tables, particularly striking up a long conversation with a lovely woman named Trudy at the Penguin table.  I met a lot of interesting bookstore owners.

I also met an art teacher who has written a series of books called We the Peepers -- these were interesting -- and got stopped by another author signing books.  His was a magnificent study in marketing, to say nothing of its apparent literary merit.  The book had subplots related to history, geography, a secret society, and golf.  I was hard pressed to say it didn't appeal to my brother or father or someone else I needed to get a book for.  The whole time we were talking, I marveled and thought I would try to learn from the magnetic pull of his unapologetically long summary (it takes time to cover six subplot, after all).  He had the cadence and pull (and lingering handshake) of a low-key, small-congregation Southern preacher.  I finally suggested that it was best to keep the plot a surprise and left with a book.

Back in D.C. . . .

The real literary "in" happened when we were back in D.C. and Scott, Mac, and Canon accompanied me to Politics and Prose -- iconic, much-loved independent bookstore that is near Scott's neighborhood.  Although many friends had suggested trying to speak there, Politics and Prose schedules events far enough out that by the time I approached them, they were booked.  And by the time they were free, they said my book would no longer be new.

Politics and Prose, being a D.C. institution with agreeable values, was hosting the book fair for Mac's school, and Scott was co-chairing the committee.  While Scott set up a tab in the cafe, I chatted up a nice South African clerk who not only took up my invitation to sign copies of Museum Legs, but led me to them, on the top of this display table at the front of the shop:

Again, I am hugely complimented to see Museum Legs surrounded by real other books. . . 

Back in New York. . . 

I visited the wonderful Op-Ed Project workshop to give away a copy of Museum Legs at the end of the program.  Every once in a while, in a planes-trains-and-automobiles phase, I forget something important -- in this case thinking the workshop ended at 9 instead of 8pm.  Having even had to kill a lot of time on a wander over from work, luckily the workshop ran long, and I got to see this inspiring group of participants:

The founder, Katie Orenstein, is in the orange dress near the middle.  

The backstory on the organization is that sometime around when Larry Summers may or may not have said anything about women in science and math, a group of women journalists started talking about why women were under-represented on op-ed pages and, by extension, in public debate.  The statistic was that 88% of op-eds were written by men.  BUT, the other statistic was that 9 out of 10 submissions were also coming from men.  (So, women were technically batting above average but not submitting enough.)

Katie's own story is that shortly after college she had a fellowship to study folklore in Haiti.  She was there when the coup broke out.  Because she spoke dialects, she could have conversations with people others couldn't.  She started writing about the coup, and her work was picked up on a number of op-ed pages.  She said that, in those first few assignments, she was taught a lot on the job about how to construct an opinion piece -- largely that it is not an "opinion" piece but an evidence-based argument.  She thought these were learnable skills and set out to teach more women to do it.  

All of the workshop's materials are open source.  They encourage you to share them, just to let them know if you xerox handouts for more than ten or so people so they can keep track of their outreach.  I've even recommended their materials to men -- e.g., a highly gifted technology guy in a senior management role -- because I think there are a lot of voices not included in public debate.  (This is a topic covered in more depth in the San Francisco post -- private knowledge within companies vs. public knowledge in newspapers, and how this split is a justification for the importance of blogs.)

The program has amazing statistics for having workshop participants place op-eds.  (I am still in the unsuccessful yet undeterred camp, but am applying myself to this more soon.)  

Anyway, I can't say enough good things about the Op-Ed Project -- and people like Katie Couric do too.  You can check it out at www.theopedproject.org.

Nearly missing the meeting was a good reminder to me to take a break, which I happily did watching some Tivo with my sister's husband, and flying back to Memphis the next day.  

side note / postscript: I have this idea that it is important to talk to people you disagree with about politics because otherwise your views are essentially formed by the media you watch / read / listen to.  D.C. is also fun because my host was a super smart ideological conservative and it's not that often someone of liberal view (even if my own personal "bleeding heart libertarian" version) is asked to re-articulate to herself why we have public schools.  One of the key points of the Op-Ed workshop is that you have to remember that people who disagree with you are rational and moral and intelligent, working from a different set of values.