ALA AAR!

Back from Washington City...by the skin of my airplane's teeth--we landed about two hours before a HORRIFIC Midwestern thunderstorm. A slight delay and no doubt we would have been blown to Boise, or someplace equally mysterious and distant. As it was, by the time my ride got me home, the roads were flooded, the airports closed, and tree branches were flying everywhere.

The ALA was humongous and full of Librarians, most of whom did not fit the stereotype, some of whom did, and proudly. I signed some books, talked to people waiting in line to see Judy Blume, attended a reception, and did other conference-y things I omit here for interest's sake.

Washington City, good heavens how she has changed. All that I remembered from my punk rock salad days is now gone gone gone, subsumed in a tidal wave of Disneyfication. While it was disgraceful to have our nation's capitol looking like a bombed out city, I'm not sure turning it into a historical theme park is an improvement. Particularly irksome was how the developers kept the 1860s facades of four story buildings, then built ten story glass towers behind. The result is like Main Street USA gone horribly awry. Ah poor Columbia, the British tried, the French tried, the Confederates tried, but it took developers to ruin you.

The highlight of my trip was soft-shell crabs, of course, how lucky the ALA took place in the middle of the season. Also, my three trips to Wawa, as memorialized in the previous posting. Two days were marvelous weather-wise and then the Southern Miasma descended, humidity 90 percent, sky white as paper--an weather phenom that I do not care for at all. The sky should be blue, darn it, or fluffy with clouds, or scudding grey--not whitewhitewhite!

And now I'm home, and must get onto my thank you notes...