Meeting a radio hero, originally uploaded by Aunt Christina.

I love listening to NPR, especially Weekend Edition Saturday with Scott Simon. He's got the best voice, and he's always funny and warm and has a great interviewing style. So I jumped at the chance to meet him when I heard he would be giving a talk and signing books at the Hudson Historical Society and Public Library this week. (Hudson is a great library practically next door to my library.) He's written a new novel, called Windy City, which he was promoting. He was also in town, he told us, to have surgery for a pinched nerve--so he was apologizing in advance for signing sloppy autographs. Man, what a generous person to even bother with the signing when he was probably in pain. I felt really guilty asking him to sign my book; but I sort of have this collection of NPR personality autographs started, in my copy of National Public Radio: The Cast Of Characters, by Mary Collins. I took it with me on my vacation to Washington DC a couple of years ago where I got to tour NPR's offices and meet a few of the hosts, and I've wanted to add more signatures to it as I see them at various events. It's also a fun conversation starter, because it's from 1993 so all of the photos are of much younger versions of them! Mr. Simon wrote over his photo (where he is lounging on a couch)-- "My wife got rid of the couch!"

Anyway, Mr. Simon gave a fabulous "lecture" (it was billed as a lecture, but that makes it sound like he's a college professor. He was very informative, but it wasn't dry at all, very conversational.) It is always so weird to have a face to put to the voice you usually only hear--even though I knew what he looked like, watching a person talk whom you've only ever *heard* is just a bizarre experience at first. But he was great. Talked a lot about politics, about the recent election, about Chicago politics in particular since that is what his book is about, and it tied in nicely with Barack Obama hailing from Chicago too. Simon also has roots in the Cleveland area, as an audience member pointed out, and that was neat to hear about. His father used to be an announcer for the Cleveland Indians! I had not known that. When he talked about things like that he slipped easily into other voices, sounding just like a baseball announcer in front of 90,000 fans, or imitating the late Studs Terkel while recounting some anecdotes about him. Ah, I could have listened to him talk all night. I hope he records an audiobook of Windy City (which sounds a lot more appealing to me now after I've heard more about it--at first I thought, huh, political novel, not really my style), because when he read excerpts from the book he also did a great Chicago mayor character's voice and he was very dramatic, just like an actor would have performed it. I think it would be a great book to listen to. But I'll be reading my print copy first, and hearing Scott Simon's voice in my head as I do so...

Sorry I've not been posting for a little while. I've been busy and tired and trying to finish one huge load of photos before going on to the next big batch, but it always takes longer than I expect to edit, label and upload them, and I still try to keep up with the rest of my life and not let my shutterbugging completely take over my days... I got back from the Rolex trip (still uploading those! right now I'm having Flickr Uploadr technical difficulties, aaaaaugh!) and the next day went straight into a trip down to North Carolina to support my sister while she defended her PhD dissertation. My parents and I had a great four day vacation; it rained hard the first two days but we just chose not to do any outdoor sightseeing and so we avoided most of it. Went to the Museum of North Carolina History, for example, in Raleigh. I came back from that trip and the very next day went to a two-day teen librarians' conference a couple of hours' drive from home. Poor Goldie hardly knew what to think: I was gone for days, home one night, gone again, home again only one night, poor thing. (But she loves her Auntie Sandy, who took care of her for most of that time, and actually she is quite spoiled by all of the attention when I'm not here--she gets the run of TWO apartments!) Then I had a couple of days' breather, no more traveling, but all this past week I have been out of the library doing summer reading booktalks. Literally, all day, in the same school, talking to 10 classes in a row at the 5th-6th grade level. They're a lot of fun, I love kids that age, and I enjoy bragging about books and tempting them to come to the library in the summer with cool programs (this year we're doing "Catch the Reading Bug" for K-6, complete with a live bug show, and "Book an Adventure" for 7-12, which I piggybacked off the new Indiana Jones movie--so for example we'll have a Cliffhanger Matinee double feature). But it is exhausting by the end of the day, and to go right back in again the next day starts to wear on you. And, at the same time I was freaking out as I took care of last minute details and emergencies regarding my big Saturday program: voice actor/artist/author Sonny Strait came to speak to my Anime Club yesterday. 

I'll talk a little more about him when I get around to the photos of his visit. :-) But suffice to say, he was wonderful, the teens loved him, and we only had one last minute crisis--  his cell phone call in the middle of my booktalk, two hours before his flight departure time,  to ask me why his flight was listed for the next day!!! (Turns out he was looking at Dallas Fort Worth airport instead of Dallas Love Field--but I didn't even know there were two Dallas airports, I didn't see that when I booked the ticket and sent him the itinerary, and the computer itinerary didn't say anything but DALLAS! ack! Talk about panicked, til we called the airline and straightened it out.) So, I had the run to the airport Thursday night to pick him up and take him to his hotel, and the driving back and forth to and from the hotel and library yesterday, etc, but we had a nice conversation in the car and he is the sweetest guy. You can check him out here. Oh, and I was going to blog about the conference, too, because I got to meet two terrific teen authors, Todd Strasser and John Green. Plus I had a mini-wild-kingdom extravaganza, photowise, while enjoying the grounds of the conference center.  But that'll wait for another post when--say it with me all together folks--I get the photos uploaded. :-)

Meanwhile, back in the barn...