Pardon the Interruption

Hush!  Be quiet. Don't bother me while I'm reading. All right! All right! Just let me finish this paragraph.

Now. You have my full attention. But wait. Before you start, let me tell you about the book I'm reading.

It's called Still Life with Bread Crumbs and I love it. I love the sheer act of reading it. It delights me, even though I haven't gotten very far into it - only about twenty percent according to my Kindle, which was a present (and the best present I ever received) from the love of my life who recently died.

The book was written by Anna Quindlen. It's a story about a woman who's famous - or was once, but now she's strapped for cash. She wants to get away, to write a book, so she rents a cottage - well, it's more like a cabin - a rundown cabin in the woods somewhere. She meets a man and falls in love. I think she falls in love. I'm not that far enough into the book yet to know - but I love it.

In one scene she sees him with a gun, getting ready to shoot a bald eagle so she makes a lot of noise to scare the eagle away. Only it 's not a gun and he's not a hunter. He explains that it's a tracking device and that he works on weekends keeping track of the eagle's habits for the scientists he works for. She gets embarrassed and he tells her not to worry. The eagle, he says, will come back soon because it has a mate in a nest nearby. "He'll be back. He always is," he says.

"The same bird in the same location?" she asks.

And then he answers with a line I love: "They mate for life... Unlike people."

All right now. What was it you wanted? Oh, right. Now it's my turn to be embarrassed, I think as I glance at the clock on my dashboard.  It's time for me to put this school bus into gear and start my morning run. All right. Thanks, Nick. I'm off.

My memoir, Dear Elvis, is available at amzn.to/2uPSFtE

My First Book Signing - or Not

First, let me set the scene.  It is 1960.  Dwight Eisenhower is the president. Arlen Specter is still a Democrat and an assistant district attorney in Philadelphia. John F. Kennedy is the Democratic party’s nominee and he is about to appear at the Cheltenham shopping center, just outside of Philadelphia and two blocks from my home. 

 

I grab my youngest sister’s hand and drag her with me to see the next President. I am nineteen. My little sister is seven. We arrive at the back of the mall behind the Gimbel’s store as a helicopter flies overhead. Moments later we watch as Kennedy climbs the steps to the podium and begins his speech. Among the remarks he makes are these words: “I believe the Sixties will be difficult for the United States.” (How did he know?) 

    

Kennedy completes his remarks and the crowd disperses. My sister and I walk back home from an event neither of us will ever forget.  Coincidentally, it will be Arlen Specter who, years later, originates the “single bullet theory.” 

Now, flash forward with me to last week. Because I will have to promote my book, Rude Awakening, in the near future, I went to a local Barnes and Noble to watch another author, Lisa Scottoline, do a presentation for her latest book, Keep Quiet. Lisa is a pro! From the moment she walked out to introduce herself, she commanded the stage and never lost her audience’s attention. 

At one point, while talking about people in the crowd – and there was a crowd – she said she saw some new people she had never seen before at one of her readings?  Actually, she asked how many people here were virgins and then laughed when at least a half-dozen people, including me, raised their hands.  But it was my first signing and I was thoroughly entertained, enthralled and intimidated.  Later, as she signed my copy of Keep Quiet, I mentioned my upcoming book and beamed when she said, “Great title.” 

  

It wasn’t until I was leaving the store that I remembered I wasn’t a virgin after all. Suddenly I was back in 1960.   When I heard that the author of Steps in Time would be appearing at Wanamaker’s in center city Philadelphia, I made a beeline for the store to see the man I had had a crush on since I was a pre-teen. Now, it isn’t every girl who can say she lost her virginity to Fred Astaire. 

My memoir, Dear Elvis, is available at amzn.to/2uPSFtE