This weekend was the town fair. A hot air balloon launch scheduled for 6am Saturday morning kicked off the festivities. So Justin and I dragged ourselves out of bed at 5:30 and headed over to the golf course where the event would be. The paper advertised around 60 hot air balloons, but when we got there: zero. But there were spaces marked off for them, and a large crowd was gathered, and there was music, so we waited. Eventually, about ten minutes after 6, a caravan of balloonists appeared. Truck after truck towing balloon baskets drove onto the grass. It was about a twenty-minute wait for the balloonists to get situated and start laying out their balloons before the first ones went up in the air.… Read the rest
My book group recently read The Traitor King, by Todd Mitchell, and the author was kind enough to join our book group for the discussion. For anyone looking for authors to invite to speak at your schools, libraries, bookstores, or conferences, you might want to consider Todd. Based on how he was with our book group, I think he’d be fabulous for an author visit. (You can find information on his visits and how to contact him at his website www.toddmitchellbooks.com.) He has been a teacher for the past twelve years and is currently the Director of the Beginning Creative Writing Teaching Program at Colorado State University.… Read the rest
I can remember sitting on the living room couch, my feet barely hanging off the edge of the cushion, listening to records—or LPs as my parents still call them—through speakers that flanked our upright piano. Two of my favorites were comedy albums—Bill Cosby and Steve Martin. When I listened to my musical albums, like Sha-Na-Na or Disney’s Mousercise, I danced or turned cartwheels in the open space of the living room. But those comedy albums were like read-aloud stories, and for those I sat quietly and listened.
I don’t know how many of the jokes I understood, or exactly what it was that I found funny.… Read the rest
