T. Scott

No Place Is Very Far Away

We went to Chamonix so that we could stand on the slopes of Mont Blanc.    When we stepped off the cable car at Brevent, I was surprised that we were standing in snow.  Lynn gave me that pitying, affectionate look she displays when I'm being particularly obtuse.  "November?  The Alps?  And you weren't expecting snow?"  Yes, well, I'd been pretty focused on the Global Health Library meeting.

We'd been uncertain, from the forecasts, what the weather would be like, but it could not have been more beautiful.  Bright sunshine, crisp blue skies with just a few picturesque clouds kissing the mountain tops.  We spent an hour or so there, pushing our way through the snow toward 6500 feet, and then in the afternoon, another hour near the Mer de Glace, on the other side of the valley.

The concierge at our hotel had said that Saturday would be a good day to get out of town, because there were anti-WTO demonstrations planned.   When our bus was pulling back into the station in Geneva at the end of the day, our tour guide, Simon, said that there had been "an incident" that afternoon and we should "be careful" if we were going to be out walking through the central city that evening.  We found out later that the demonstrations had turned violent and there were smashed windows and cars lit afire a block from our hotel.  By the time we went out for lunch the next day, the cars had been cleared away and many, though not all, of the broken windows were boarded up. 

For several years now, I've kept a travel journal separate from the notebook that I write in every morning when I'm at home.  In the front of each I write the date range that it covers and list the cities that I've taken it to.  The one that I'm just finishing up starts August 7, 2009 and lists the following:  Washington DC, North Little Rock, Brisbane QLD, Lancaster MA, Birmingham, Breckenridge CO, Frankfurt, Memphis, Boston and Geneva.  Even for me, that's an extraordinary amount of travel for a four month stretch.

Without ubiquitous internet access and the trusty laptop it wouldn't be possible.   But I manage to get at the email everyday and I can get a lot of work done on those long airplane flights.  Some projects don't get done quite as soon as I would like, but I manage to get to it all eventually.  And I think that the work that I've done on these journeys is worthwhile and important.   Certainly it is endlessly interesting.

I'm glad to be home now for awhile, though.  At the moment, there's nothing on the calendar until early February, although there are one or two things in the offing that might call me out of town before then.  But for now I'm just looking forward to going to the library every day, and getting into something that feels like a routine. 

Tomorrow Marian and Josie will be coming over to help us trim the Christmas tree.  That's more exciting to me than standing on the side of a mountain.

Les Soeurs des Montagnes

Arielle greets us at the door, face beaming, eyes bright under the frame of wiry gray hair.  "Hallo," she says, in her thick French accent, reaching out to take our hands in hers.   A few steps behind her, MariJo peeks out with what we mistake for shyness.  "Bon Soir!" she calls. 

"Bon soir," we say, amused and delighted by the effusiveness of the greeting, and I ask if we can book a table for about an hour from now.  

"But of course!" says Arielle, and writes my name in her book.  "Voila! We'll see you again about 7:00."

In doing my restaurant research before heading out to Breckenridge, I'd put Le Petit Paris at the top of my list.  The reviews were pretty good, and since a nice Parisian bistro is my favorite type of restaurant, I'm always on the lookout for another one to add to my collection.  Lynn and I had gone out for dinner with friends the night before, so on our last night in Breckenridge we were looking for something a little intimate, casual and romantic, and this seemed to fit the bill.

As we walked back out onto the street, we were both grinning.  "I have a good feeling about this," I said.

We did a bit more strolling along Main Street, the sun out now after the earlier snow showers, lighting up the last bits of day.  We stopped at the Crown Tavern for a whisky, sitting in comfy chairs by the fireplace, talking about how fine and fun the conference had been.   Great speakers, superb location, wonderful friends.  We'd had a fine time the night before singing and playing until late.

Back at Le Petit Paris, Arielle led us to a comfortable corner table and we embarked on one of the most delightful dining experiences we've ever had.  The food & wine were superb, the place itself wonderfully cozy and completely Parisian, but les soeurs themselves were what lifted it into another plane.

Arielle is the elder -- sixty next year, as she told us several times -- the owner of the place, three years now in Colorado, having gone through hope, betrayal, misery, wonder and redemption to get to the place she is now.   MariJo (which we choose to believe is diminutive for Marie Josephine), of the long blond ponytail, slender in blue jeans and her crisp white waiter's shirt, is a fountain of smiles and gentle laughter, emphasizing that we have all of the time in the world.

Over the course of the next couple of hours we have a remarkable meal and gentle, funny, serious, deep conversation with each of the sisters, conversation that never seems intrusive, never gets in the way of the romantic intimacy of the evening that Lynn and I are having, but that tugs us gently into their world.  MariJo helps me with my french, particularly the tricky tongue action necessary to get "grenouilles" just right.  We hear from Arielle about the circumstances that led to the restaurant being shuttered for three months last year, and how it was the community that rallied round her to fix things and get her back up and running when she thought all was lost.  " I do this now for the people of Breckenridge."

We discover that MariJo, for all of her astonishing beauty, is quite the natural comedienne, and when she falls into an imitation of a Colorado redneck or a Parisian FN, putting her hands on her hips and puffing out her cheeks in indignation we're ready to fall out of our chairs with laughter.  She's telling us that, having lived all of her life in Paris, she was a little nervous about coming out to small town Colorado.  "As soon as I open my mouth," she tells us, confidentially, "they can tell I'm not from around here."  But everyone has been fabulous.  Yes, there are those small-minded people, but you find them everywhere and there aren't enough of them to let it worry you.  She takes her doggies out for walks in the mountains and thinks she's moved to someplace very much like heaven.

We talk with Arielle about wine, and find that, like Lynn, she doesn't care for white wines, believes that you can find the right red wines to go with anything, and that she spends a lot of time picking out just the right wines for her restaurant.  "I'm no sommelier," she says several times (she says everything several times), "But I pay attention to wine."

MariJo does the desserts and is rhapsodic when describing them.  Often, I skip dessert, but I knew that in this place I didn't dare -- her disappointment would've been heartbreaking.  When we ask her to help us select, she asks us many, many questions before she chooses for us.  There is no shyness about her when she brings them out.  She knows they're fabulous.

Eventually, after coffee and cognac, we've about run out of reasons to stay, although we would if we could.  They come with us to the door, and we kiss on both cheeks and can't quite let the conversation go.  It is inconceivable to me that we won't see them again.

Finally, we're on the street, strolling back to the lodge.    Did we just have dinner in a restaurant?  No, Arielle and MariJo just took us in for a few hours.

Halfway Round the World

Alas, when people gather to share stories about the horrors of airplane travel, we'll have nothing to share about our flight home from Brisbane.   Everything was on time, all of the gate agents and flight attendants were friendly and good natured.  Economy class on V Australia turned out to be every bit as comfortable as advertised, and Lynn had some fun conversation with the guy sitting next to her, who was on his way to LA to meet, for the first time in person, his internet girlfriend of nine months.  We watched movies, had some pretty good food, slept for a bit.  I did a lot of writing.

We breezed through immigration and customs and transferred our luggage.  Stopped for a cappuccino, and then on to the Sky Club to check email and have a bloody mary.  It was early morning in LA, and just after midnight in Brisbane (our flight left Brisbane at 11:00am on Sunday and arrived in LA at 6:45am on Sunday.  I love that.)

I'd already upgraded us to first class for the flight from LAX to Atlanta, so we had lunch on the plane.  More reading and writing and another hour long nap.  A short layover in Atlanta, then home.

Halfway around the world in 24 hours. 

I was trying to explain to someone who'd not been to an ICML conference before what was different about this gathering from other meetings of librarians.  I said that, first of all, the people who came to this meeting had a shared concern for global health issues and, in particular, the challenges of getting good health information to people in developing countries. They have an expansive view of the role of librarians.  And secondly, the people who came to this meeting really wanted to be here, and most of them had gone to some personal expense and trouble to be able to make it.  Even with the global economy in the state that it is, there were some 500 delegates from 45 countries gathered.  So it's very different from the typical domestic regional or even national meeting where many of the people are there just out of habit -- they go every year and are mostly interested in seeing their friends and checking out the local restaurants.  Of course, seeing friends and checking out local restaurants was a very important part of this meeting as well.  As was finding new friends. 

The meeting was incredibly well organized.  The keynote sessions were uniformly excellent, from Jeff Drazen doing a brilliant kickoff that provided considerable insight into the challenges of putting out a top-tier journal, to Ian Frazer on the critical role that librarians have to play in addressing health challenges in developing countries, to Brian Fitzgerald, at the session that I chaired, doing a rapid-fire overview of the intellectual property issues swirling around open access, the Google book settlement, patents in the digital world, and the opportunities for collaborative drug development.   The contributed papers & posters covered an extensive array of subjects, and I have to give particular credit to the presenters for whom delivering a paper in English was a considerable challenge and who had the courage to rise to meet it.

Conference support was superb.  The Bearded Pigs even had a professional sound & light crew for our performance at the gala dinner.  With Malcolm up in the rafters monitoring everything, I'm sure we have never sounded as good (and likely never will again).  There were still a half dozen dancers on the floor when we finally wrapped it up at 11:30.

Oh, I suppose we'll tell the story about one suitcase being delayed for a day on our way in, and the tale of our poor lost cab driver who took two hours to get us to our hotel from the airport (typically a twenty minute drive) will be good for the telling.  But right now, after getting a good seven and a half hours of sleep and waking up at my normal time on a Monday morning, I've got nothing but good things to say about international travel.    Americans really ought to do more of it.

Another Road Trip

By the time I got to the end of the Last Long Road Trip, the letters that I was writing to Lynn were becoming increasingly plaintive -- I'd been gone from home too long and was missing her and the girls too much.   As much as I've enjoyed those solitary road trips over the years, I didn't think I could do another one.

But lately, the urge to get on the highway again is coming back.  It's sparked in part by this Ambrose book about the building of the transcontinental railroad.   On that first trip, in 1992, I followed the Platte River part way across Nebraska and I remember being astonished at the beauty of the river and the landscape.  I didn't realize, until I started reading this book, that I was on the transcontinental railroad route. 

Eventually, I turned north, up to the Black Hills, the Badlands, Rapid City and Bear Butte, before continuing across Wyoming and into Utah.  By the time I got home, I'd been gone nearly two weeks and had driven over 4,000 miles.   I've taken several long, aimless, driving trips since then, but I haven't been back to the Black Hills since '96, and I think that's where I ought to head next time.

I can't manage it this year -- the calendar is already too full, with the MLA meeting in Hawaii in May, a trip to Wisconsin at the end of June, and ICML in Brisbane at the beginning of September.  So it'll have to wait until sometime in the summer of 2010. 

Something to look forward to.

Edinburgh Was Great, But Then There Was Peebles

We couldn't stop remarking on the friendliness of the people.   Everyone that we met in the town of Peebles, from the hotel Hydro staff to the barmen in the pubs (like the guy at the Bridge Inn who couldn't stop thanking us for coming by) to the waitstaff in every restaurant (although I'll remember in particular the bright eyes and "okey-dokey" of that cute young thing at the Crown) to the people that we met walking their dogs on the river path to Neidpath Castle, was as open and kind as could be (oh, wait, there was that little old lady walking her dog who startled us with the rough expletives she muttered at the women on the street ahead of her -- still wondering what that was about).

The cab driver who took us to the airport yesterday morning pointed out the sights as we drove along.  After nearly a week in Scotland I could understand most of his brogue, although figuring out what some of the words meant was still a challenge.  He exemplified the pride in place that everyone that we met there seemed to have.  They believe that they live in a remarkable place, and they were pleased, and not terribly surprised, that we thought so too.

They really did make us feel like visiting dignitaries.    The CILIPS  folks, Elaine, Rhona and Ann, who made all of the arrangements, were simply astonishing.    Alan, the current president, was a delight to talk to, full of marvelous tales of the history of the place, as well as giving us excellent recommendations for pubs and restaurants.   (And he certainly was resplendent in his white tux, with ceremonial medallion hanging across his shoulders, the evening of the conference dinner).  By the time we were gathering for our goodbyes and last pictures yesterday we were practically in competition to see who could thank who the best and the most.

According to Rhona, by the morning after the Bearded Pigs gig, we were the "talk of the steamy" and the street cred of Ringer Ruthven, our Scottish bass player, had gone up several notches.    A couple of hours before the gig, Ringer and I ran through a few of the songs and that was all it took.  He was great.  "And here's another song that Ringer's never heard before," I'd say, before launching into Little Black Car, or What Were We Playin', and he'd watch my hands for the chord changes and be right there.  The librarians drank and danced and laughed and we wailed away for hours.

For my presentation the next day, knowing that I was speaking largely to a crowd of public librarians, I emphasized the importance of medical and public librarians working together in this changed era of empowered patients.  That seemed to hit a chord and I had a number of good conversations with conference delegates afterwards.   I found the same sorts of things that I see everywhere as I travel around, talking with librarians from other countries -- we all face similar challenges, although our organizational structures and local political settings are different.  But the level of intelligence, dedication, and determination is the same everywhere I go.  I'm always grateful for the feedback that I get and I know that I learn as much or more from those conversations as they get from whatever I happen to be talking about in my presentations.

In short, a magnificent trip.  I come back, as I always do from overseas, changed a little, and for the better.

   

Balance

I forgot to tell my mother I was going to Scotland.  Things have been a little hectic lately.  (And now I'm wondering if we remembered to tell Marian!!)

The Scotland trip feels as if it's a long way off, but in fact, we leave just three weeks from tomorrow.  But MLA in Chicago is between now and then, and that looms much larger.

My ostensible purpose in going to the CILIPS conference in Peebles is to deliver a talk on how librarians are delivering health information to their communities.  There's been a tremendous shift over the past quarter century in the focus that medical librarians have had and it's going to be great fun to go over some of those issues and talk about some of the things that MLA and NLM are doing, as well as some of the things that are happening locally.  I haven't actually started to put the talk together (it's still three and a half weeks away, for heaven's sake!), but I've been thinking about it in spare moments and I think I've got a good handle on how I want to approach it.

The real reason they want me there, though, is so The Bearded Pigs can play at the awards banquet.  We won't quite have the whole band -- Cogman, SG & Russell can't make it.  But the nice thing about having an eight piece band is that there are many subsets of the whole group that can perform as The Bearded Pigs (or The Nucleus).   We'll have a ringer for a  bass player -- a local librarian.  We've corresponded just a bit by email and he seems unfazed by the prospect of sitting in and playing with people he's never met on songs that he's never heard.  Sounds like our kind of guy.

So on the Tuesday evening, I'll play guitar and sing my heart out, and on Wednesday afternoon (thank god it's not the first thing in the morning!) I'll spend an hour or so talking about health information and the impact that we can have on the communities that we're a part of.   

There's been some chatter lately about the perennial work/life balance issue.   These discussions often emphasize the importance of having a "life outside of work."  I resolved that for myself a long time ago.

I don't have a "life outside of work."  I have a life.  It's comprised of many things -- many responsibilities, many joys, a handful of deep sorrows, a continual sense of wonderment as the days unfold.  I never stop being the library director, but I never stop being the musician, friend, grandfather, lover, writer, or endlessly curious little boy, either.

When a "job" is what you go to for eight hours a day, five days a week, within rigid time & place boundaries, I suppose it makes psychological sense to think of "work" and "life" as two separate things.  But in the networked world in which we now live, for many people that time & space separation simply doesn't exist.  It certainly doesn't for me.    When I go to Peebles, whether I'm playing guitar or talking about health information, I'll just be living my life as best I can.

City of Hogs

When Gatha Snowmoss, roving photojournalist, spent some time with the band in Memphis this spring, she showed her appreciation (no other reporter has been afforded the kind of no holds barred inside look at the Pigs that she got) by giving each of us a book -- a pig-related book, of course.  Each one perfectly tuned (or so it seemed to me) to our individual personalities.  I'm sure her ability to size her subjects up so quickly accounts for much of her recent success.

I'll leave the others to comment on their own books, but for me it was The Pig and the Skyscraper (Chicago: A history of our future) by Marco d'Eramo.  I've been reading it over the last couple of weeks and enjoying it tremendously.  D'Eramo is an Italian sociologist and the book was published in Italy in 1999 (translated into English in 2002).    So reading it is like eavesdropping on an Italian professor trying to explain America (through the lens focused on Chicago) to an Italian audience. 

I wonder, as I'm reading it, if Europeans, reading books about Europe written by Americans, have the same sort of reaction that I'm having -- some of it is wonderfully perceptive, but some of it just seems so bone-headedly wrong, like the anthropologist coming across a "primitive" culture and devising all sorts of esoteric explanations for what he or she sees, while the ostensible subjects are laughing behind their hands at the foolish scientists.  (Remember the Margaret Mead controversy of a couple of years ago?)

The fact that so much housing stock in the US is wood fascinates d'Eramo and he gives it great significance in explaining the American character -- in Europe wood is apparently seldom used.  He makes much of the American invention of the suburb, and exaggerates the social/cultural divides that occur in many parts of the States.  His description of race relations is extremely one-dimensional and diminishes the actual complexities that the country wrestles with.  In the America that he describes, Obama's ascendancy would simply not be possible.  There is always truth in his observations, and yet there is also a clear skewing of facts and interpretations in order to hammer home his rhetorical truths.  D'Eramo comes from a decidedly Marxist bent, and this lens opens up some wonderful observations, but also seems to blind him to some obvious contradictions between what he claims and what seems to me to be obviously the case.

At any rate, it is a great fun provocative and challenging read and perfect for these last few days before I spend a week in Chicago.  And it is another stark reminder that the way the rest of the world views us in the States is not necessarily the way that we see (or would like to see) ourselves.

Magic Kingdom

About four in the afternoon, Josie drifted off to sleep in her stroller as we walked from Fantasyland to Tomorrowland.   We'd started that day (our 2nd) early, arriving at the Magic Kingdom a little before 9:00 for our breakfast with the princesses in Cinderella's castle.  We'd been anticipating that there'd be some kind of a meltdown at some point, Josie feeling overwhelmed with it all, but that hadn't happened.  We'd been at the park until 10:00 the previous evening and throughout it all, she'd been happy and at ease and delighted with everything that she saw.  By now she had her little autograph book nearly filled, and she still didn't know anything about the lunch we'd be having with the Little Einsteins the next day.

I found a bench in the Tomorrowland plaza and took out my journal to write for a bit and keep an eye on Josie while Lynn & Marian went off to ride Space Mountain.  It's a little ironic that of all of the lands in Magic Kingdom, it's Tomorrowland that looks most dated -- such a quaint and optimistic vision of what the world would be like now, seen through the rosy glasses of someone fascinated with the potential of technology back in the fifties.  Lynn and I were particularly amused at the news robot -- up to the minute news, printed out while you wait.  But it's that veneer of foolish optimism that I love about Disneyworld -- as long as we can imagine such things, perhaps all is not lost.

Josie's good spirits would continue through the rest of the trip.  That afternoon, she slept about ninety minutes and then was ready to go again.  We had tickets for Mickey's special Christmas party, so we didn't leave the park until midnight.  The only thing that gave her trouble on the entire trip was the fireworks -- she does NOT like fireworks.  It's the noise.  She seems to have sensitive hearing to begin with (I noticed her covering her ears during the Christmas parade when some of the loudest floats came by, and she seemed to be the only small kid doing that).    She's been through fireworks a few times and knows what they're about, so I don't think it actually frightens her as much as it hurts her.  Her message to Mommy is, "Make it stop or get me outta here!!"  But she did tell me, later on, "When I'm big, I'll listen to fireworks okay."

She showed none of the shyness that small children sometimes do around the costumed characters, and she knew all of their names.  She'd stand in line patiently, her autograph book under her arm, opened to a blank page, her pen clutched in her hand, and when it was her turn she'd trot up, hand them to the character, and then give them a big hug and pose for the pictures.  (When Lynn & Marian downloaded the shots from their cameras, there were a total of 317.  Lynn says she's whittled them down to about 250).

Of the princesses, it is clear that Snow White is her favorite.  At breakfast, when they made their rounds of the tables, she was happy to see them all, but not the least intimidated.  But when Snow White came up, she was awed.  She had a similar reaction when she saw Woody (from Toy Story) that night.  She came walking back to me after getting her autograph and hug and the look on her face was bliss -- as if she was a thirteen year old who'd just been kissed by her favorite popstar.

The carousel, the teacups (which she called "coffee!" of course), Buzz Lightyear, the Transit Authority, and the Peter Pan flying boats seemed to be her favorite rides, although she was quite proud of herself at the end of Haunted Mansion.  Her mom had been prepping her for dealing with the witches and ghosts for weeks (since Hallowe'en).   "What do you do when you see a ghost?" Marian would say, swaying and making a whoo-whoo sound.  "Roarrrr!" Josie would say, going into her tiger crouch.  She rode with me through Haunted Mansion, doing a lot of roaring as we went through the graveyard, and hopped out of the gondola at the end jumping up and down and crowing, "I did it!  I did it!"

She's two months shy of three years old which might be a little young for Disney.  But she's very verbal, and by last spring, she knew all the character names and Marian thought she might be able to manage a short trip.  It was tremendous fun for all of us.  We're already talking about next time.

It Started in Omaha

In March of 1984, I made my second visit to Omaha.   The first had been in 1962, a family vacation to visit my mother's sister, whose husband was a colonel in the air force -- a trip, incidentally, during which my youngest sister was conceived, according to family lore.

I had very little notion of what I was going to do with the rest of my life.  I was in my late twenties and had spent the previous eight months at NLM as a Library Associate, a circumstance that I would never have believed possible barely a year earlier.  I was a sponge at NLM.  I'd gone into library school with only the vaguest notion of maybe being a reference librarian in a small college library, and then found myself with free rein to explore the largest specialized library in the world, filled with some of the most fascinating and influential characters a tyro librarian would ever have the opportunity to meet.  It had been an astonishing time, but I still didn't know what I wanted to do  once my year as an Associate was up and I had to start thinking about finding a real job.

My mentors at NLM had me pegged for a management career.  What they saw in me in those early days remains a mystery to me yet, I was so shy and uncertain, and at the same time so arrogant and pompous.  Fairly insufferable most days, I'm sure.  I knew practically nothing and my work experience was almost all in factories.  I was a pretty good fork-lift driver and I'd built a modest reputation as a guitar player on my college campus, but that was about it.

Nonetheless, it was decided that for my March practicum (a standard part of the program in those days) I should spend a week with Bob Braude and his crew at the McGoogan Library of Medicine in Omaha.  Bob was (rightfully) considered to be among the very best library directors of the day and he had gathered around him an astonishing group of innovative and creative and engaged young librarians.  If one wanted to see the potential for what a library could be as we moved into the end of the 20th century, this was one of the best places to check it out.

I stayed at Bob's house and from the moment I groggily came down to the kitchen where he'd be fixing breakfast for us, until late in the evening after his wife had fixed another wonderful dinner, we'd talk about libraries and what was happening with them and how you could make them better and more effective and what it meant to try to pull together a crew of great librarians and turn them loose.  During the day, I'd sit in on his meetings, I'd listen to all of the discussion.  The meeting would end and Bob would say, "So, now you've heard the situation.  What do you think we should do?"  And we'd talk through his decision making process so that I could begin to get a grasp of the impossible balancing act that is required to juggle all of the competing interests that come into play for almost every decision that a director ends up making on any given day.

During most weeks, not much happens to change the course of one's life.  On any given Sunday, you're pretty much the same person that you were the previous Sunday, and the contours of your life haven't shifted perceptibly.  Some weeks, though, are clear turning points, and this was one of them.  I remember, late on Friday, exhausted but happy, slumped in my seat on the metro, riding from National Airport up to my stop in Silver Spring, thinking back on the week.  "That's where I want to be.  I'm going to be the director of one of those libraries one day."   Six years later, I was.

In the years since, it's happened that I've been to Omaha many times.  While I was living in St. Louis, I would go up once or twice a year for the Regional Medical Library advisory meetings.  I've always had a great time, and it's been fun to watch the downtown area grow and develop into a really great conference location.   Even if it wasn't full of great memories for me, I'd be looking forward to the trip.

I've crossed paths in Omaha with a number of the women that I've loved, but the most important encounter was when I accepted Lynn's invitation to have dinner with her when we were both attending the Chapter meeting in 1993.  I'd been to group dinners that she'd hosted two or three times before, but this was the first time that it was just the two of us, and even though it was a business dinner and neither of us could have imagined how our lives would become intertwined, I think back on it as one of the finest evenings I've ever had at a conference.  We went to Vivace, a great little place in the Old Market.  We have a reservation there for dinner tonight.

In the many times that I've been back to Omaha these twenty-three years, I think I've only been back to the McGoogan Library once.  But I'll be there tomorrow night for the welcome reception.  Mark Funk will be there, too.  He was one of those incredibly bright and passionate young librarians that Braude had gathered around him a quarter-century ago.  Now he's the President of the Medical Library Association, coming to the meeting to give an update on the work and workings of MLA.  The reception will be loud and fun and there'll be lots of conversation and greetings of old and new friends and all the rest.  But I suspect that Mark will be doing some of what I'll be doing as well -- looking around the corners, seeing his younger self here and there, remembering what it was like when that building played such an important role in his life, and all of the changes that have happened since.

Solitude in the City

I'm typically quite eager to get on the plane headed to wherever.  Even in these days when the papers are full of complaints about overcrowded skies and delayed flights I'm happy to be traveling.  So I was a little surprised yesterday to be feeling so blue as I drove out to the airport for my flight to Chicago -- particularly since Chicago is one of my very favorite cities.

It's largely because this time Lynn isn't going to come up to join me.  Back when she was on the MLA Board, I would come to Chicago following the February & September board meetings.  We'd stay until Sunday and go to museums & galleries, out to a show, try out new restaurants.  When I was elected to the Board, we set up the same pattern, and so she was initially planning to join me tomorrow.   But then, with all of the chaos surrounding the opening of Gymboree, she thought better of that plan and decided to skip this one.  I don't disagree with her decision at all, but it just doesn't feel right to be up here without her.

My reaction is particularly unexpected because generally I relish solitary travel.  I like being able to explore cities, to get lost in them, to find my way into unexpected places, on my own schedule, without having to deal with the long list of compromises that are usually part of the experience of traveling with someone.  But then, compatibility in traveling is one of the hallmarks of my relationship with Lynn.  I remember, very early on, during one of the first trips we took together, we were walking along having such a good time, and I blurted out, "Being with you is almost as good as being alone!"  As soon as the words were out of my mouth I was aghast, because it sounded horrible, but she just laughed and knew exactly what I meant. 

So I should have been glad for the chance to have an extra day on my own in Chicago, but the fact is that I identify this city so much with her now.  It's where our romance began, although neither of us knew it at the time.

I felt better once we landed and I was in the cab heading to the hotel.   The weather was ugly -- drizzly and hot and very humid, but weather never makes a huge difference to me.    It's the energy of the city, that particular informal, brash confidence that Chicago has no matter what the weather, that I admire.  This is a place where people are used to coping with months of those icy winds blowing in off Lake Michigan -- they're not about to be slowed down by a little late summer heat & rain.

Before I left home, I'd picked out the restaurant that I wanted to go to for dinner.   I've been to Bistro Zinc several times and only taken Lynn there once, but I've written letters to her there, written in my journal about her there, so I associate her with it even so.  It's the perfect type of a French bistro that I seek out in whatever city I find myself.

I get a table by the window and look out over the bustle of State Street.  I write for a bit, sip my wine, and feel myself relax.  I've brought along MFK Fisher's The Gastronomical Me to read while I eat -- what can be better than reading superb prose about great food while I'm sitting in a favorite restaurant having an excellent meal of my own!  It's almost as good as being with Lynn.

I call home as I walk back to the hotel.  "Did I have a good time?" Lynn laughs.  Oh yes, I say, and tell her what we had to eat.  I'm feeling much better now.  I'll read for a bit more before sleep, and in the morning I'll work for a few hours.  The magic of modern travel is that I can get just about as much done from my hotel room as I can from my office.  Then in the afternoon the board meeting starts and for the next two days I'll be too busy and occupied to miss her too much.    Come Saturday afternoon, when the meeting is done, I'll seek out a restaurant for lunch that I think she'd like.  I'll take out fountain pen and stationery to write her a letter.  Years from now, when I remember the afternoon, I'm sure I'll see her sitting right across from me.