I volunteered at the National Book Festival this afternoon and had such a fantastic time. Not only did I feel good about contributing to such a significant event, I enjoyed watching all of the different kinds of people who came to the fair.
First, there was Caroline who has a show on Pacifica Radio. Her program, Coyote Network News (she loves having the same acronym as CNN), is "dedicated to the wild blooming of the Compassionate Trickster Heart stirring within all of us everywhere and always and the cultivation of unique, empathetic imaginative ingenuity which encourages this blooming." For more on Caroline, visit www.coyotenetworknews.com.
I met Caroline as she waited in line for Terry Pratchett to sign one of her books. We estimated that there were between 700 and 800 people waiting in the same line as Caroline. I thought I was completely out of touch with popular culture because I had never heard of Terry. But I didn't feel so bad after I had asked five Junior Leaguers about Terry and they had never heard of him, either. When I got home, I Googled Terry and found his website which advertised that "...within these pages you will meet witches, wizards, watchmen, dragons, trolls, the feegles and of course death." No wonder I had never heard of Terry.
What really surprised me was that there were hardly any people in Martha Raddatz's or Dr. Sanjay Gupta's lines. Now, I would have thought that there would have been as many people in those lines as there were in Terry Pratchett's line. After all, they did the news and this is Washington, after all. But no gives. Maybe news people just aren't novelties in Washington but watchmen and feegles are.
What was no surprise was the substantial line that greeted Cat Cora. There were so many foodies waiting for her, including a precocious ten year-old chef who told me that he loved making tilapia.
Oh, and lest I forget...I think an 80-year old woman tried to proposition me at the Festival today. She came up from behind me and told me that I "make the seat of my trousers look very nice."
The National Book Festival: a place you don't need to crack open a book to find plenty of characters.
2 comments:
I am not sure where you were standing, but I waited over an hour for Gupta, and still never got a chance to see him. If you did, good for you!
So sorry that you didn't see Sanjay--I was in the next line over, staffing the Terry Pratchett line. I got a good glimpse of the CNN doctor as he drove away in his golf cart.
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