Bookmarks Festival

A sad day as we awoke this morning and I realized that this was the first post-race pumpkin pancake breakfast at the good ole Morton Pumpkin Festival I have missed in five years. We honored the tradition of making our own pumpkin pancakes, but it just wasn't quite the same with some of that Rocke sausage (and not having run 6.2 miles first). But alas, we found the strength to carry on with our day...

I went to Bookmarks, this phenomenal outdoor book festival in Historic Bethabara Park here in Winston-Salem. From 9:30 in the morning until 4:30 or so in the afternoon, there were nearly 50 presentations by authors/illustrators and other important literary figures on 9 different stages. Some of the tents focused on mystery, humor, nonfiction, cooking, heroes & icons, teen/young adult, and childrens.

I started the morning in the "Food for Thought" tent with Tanya Steel and Tracy Seaman talking about their book Real Food for Healthy Kids. Tanya is the editor of epicurious and Tracy is the test kitchen coordinator for Rachel Ray's magazine. I was most intrigued with the televisions showing the overhead view of their cooking demonstrations.

Then, I went to the main stage to see Rue McClanahan, aka Blanche, from the Golden Girls. She is moving slowly (just had knee surgery apparently), but she is hilarious. She read excerpts from her book My First Five Husbands. It was interesting to learn that she originally (and begrudgingly) read at the casting call for the character of Rose - but knew that she was perfect for Blanche. The directors saw that as well, made the switch, and the rest is history.

After that, I saw Nikki Giovanni -famous Black poet, professor at Virginia Tech, recently branching into children't lit. The book she read from was Lincoln and Douglass - and no, that's not a typo...it is Douglass with two s's because it is about the friendship between Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass (Black abolitionist, publisher of The North Star newspaper). She was hilarious - mostly because she was not accustomed to presentations geared toward children, making adult references and even using a cuss word once.











I also saw Doreen Croning and Betsy Lewin, the author/illustrator team who has done Click, Clack, Moo, Duck for President, Diary of a Worm, and many other hilarious picture books. Their new one, Thump, Quack, Moo is great for fall and involves the creation of a corn maze.

While they were entertaining the younger ones by creating a new story with the crowd, I snuck over to hear Chris Crutcher in the teen tent. Many of his books are banned from school libraries because of the mature material, but he is a great storyteller. His years of working as a therapist definitely come out in his characters, and he often times has a sports themed backdrop for his stories to connect with many reluctant readers. He was a perfect featured author because Winston Salem is doing The Big Read (similar to Peoria Reads) with Fahrenheit 451 and featuring movies of famously banned books throughout the month.

[Oh, and Kate, I totally thought of you, but the session overlapped with Nikki Giovanni's, so I couldn't go --- Janet Lembke (I don't know if that name is familiar or not) presented her book, Because the Cat Purrs: How We Relate to Other Species and Why It Matters. I wanted to drop in her tent and say, "My sister-in-law wrote this great book about a year with her dog...it'll be published in the spring...and she's got this great blog where all of these people talk in the persona of their pet..." But I didn't...]

I listened to some great live acoustic/folk music while deciding whether I should stick (literally) it out and stay for the last three presentations I had circled on my schedule, but decided that three hours of 93 degree heat was probably good enough for the day.

I met up with Chris at Wake, where he was saving athletes' lives left and right, covering the field hockey, volleyball, and rugby matches of the day. After driving out to Tanglewood to pick up our race packets for the triathlon tomorrow, he had to go immediately back to campus to put stitches in somebody. And, he'll have to be back at Wake for some event (I forget which sport) at 11 am tomorrow morning. (It's a little crazier than usual because Suzi is covering the Irish Women's National Soccer team on their tour here in the US. They play at Soldier Field sometime this week in case any one is interested.) Our start times are 8:33 and 9:07 so we'll really have to push it to swim 300 m, bike 20k, and run 5k, get everything loaded back up in the truck, and be back to campus by 11. Nothing like a little extra motivation to push us along I guess. I'll let you know how it goes tomorrow...