wooden shoes and windmills

AAAHHHH..... a long satisfied exhale after a weekend spent celebrating one of my all-time favourite entities - books! Writers - published and unpublished alike - along with readers from all walks of life, filled the UCLA campus Saturday and Sunday for the LA Times Festival of Books. Nothing but books and writers and readers for two days!

Saturday my mother and I drove up to UCLA early. We snagged tickets (all free, mind you) to speakers like James Patterson and Sue Grafton - both were great (Grafton was cheeky and so funny in person). We browsed booths of book sellers - bought some books (just a few, surprisingly) - and enjoyed our book-loving selves thoroughly. I even hit up a few panels of authors discussing topics like Creative Non-fiction (Anne Patchett and others) and children's picture books (Rosemary Wells, Marie Louise Gay and others).

A surprise: my mom discovered Michael Hague, an illustrator with stunning work that I grew up loving, was signing books at one of the booths. I returned Sunday with an armful of my own copies. Gracious Mr. Hague signed all four of my books even though the limit was supposed to be three and he was 15 minutes past the end of his scheduled signing time. Hague has done illustrated copies of many classics. His version of Bilbo Baggins was the first I ever met, he brought the world of Pod, Homily and Arrietty Clock alive for me and his Mole will always be the protagonist I see when I read Kenneth Grahame's classic.




Sunday I headed back to LA on my own for a second day of book fun and the icing on my book festival cake: a reading by Anne Lamott from her newest book with a signing to follow! But, Anne (yes, of course, we're on a first name basis now :) was the last "act" of the day so I spent the rest of my time in a panel discussion titled How a Children's book Gets Published, with Authors Bebe Moore Campbell and Quincy Troupe and Illustrators Robin Preiss Glasser and Kadir Nelson and then a conversation with Mary and Carol Higgins Clark mediated by Connie Martinson.

About an hour before the much anticipated Anne Lamott reading I headed to the Barnes and Noble tent to purchase Anne's latest. When she finally came on stage to cheers from an overstuffed tent full of eager fans, she was exactly as I had imagined (with help from the info on the fly leaves of her books :). Bohemian. Funny. Purposeful. She read the first piece from Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith and then fielded questions - only one of which attacked the committed Jesus follower's anti-war, anti-Bush, liberal, leftist leanings. She closed with the last chapter in her phenomenal book on writing: Bird by Bird. It was so exciting to hear from a writer that has so impacted me.

All of this paired with the fact that the late Bill Peet - a genius author and illustrator and another favorite that I was introduced to as a child - designed the festival logo, made for a superb celebration of literature.

Being back in Seattle (we arrived yesterday), I'm reminded how much I LOVE this place. I was crazy to even think I'd be able to permanently settle somewhere other than here someday

After my aunt, cousin and sister (Becca is down from school this weekend!!!) picked us up at the airport, we headed over to my other cousins' little league game. Kyle (11) and Shane (10) are great baseball players!

"Can I have some of your tots?" Then we hit up one of our favourite Pacific Northwest fastfood that isn't fastfood restaurants: Taco Time. Taco Time is great for reasons only people who have ever been there would appreciate: Crisp Bean Burritos and the best pellet ice on earth - oh, and really great tots.

The afternoon was spent playing with my cousins and practicing my swing in my uncle's homemade batting cage - complete with pitching gun. 11-year-old Kyle stood outside the cage coaching my stance and telling me why I was having trouble connecting bat to ball. "Don't move your feet so much, Heather! Pretend your feet are stuck in cement. Put 75 percent of your weight on your back leg and when you swing forward lift your heel up like this." He was great, so serious.

I love being with family.

Worship. Adoration. Honour. Thanksgiving.

This evening, as I was praising Jesus and feeling so very thankful for a voice to sing with and arms to raise, the tinyest hint of envy crept into my mind as I thought of Pope JP II who was worshiping at the feet of his Creator at that very moment. A very little thought of "not fair" quickly overshadowed by thoughts of "Wow! How very cool!" ran through my mind as I worshiped, and in my mind's eye was a picture of my own eternity worshiping my Dad in Heaven. I long for that day when the praises never cease and every knee remains bowed before God. WHAT A DAY THAT WILL BE!