DOS Capitol - Monday, June 25

We opted for a slightly less hectic day, having a leisurely (and outstanding) breakfast at the Old Ebbit's Grill, around the corner from the White House. Bob and I went to the Library of Congress for a talk by Michael Blake, the author of Dances with wolves. We got there well before the program, sat near the center, and found ourselves in a long-ranging conversation with the very engaging author. He has since written a sequel to Wolves, but it was published on September 11, 2001, so it didn't get the attention that it deserved. It will be produced as a movie soon. His most recent book is Indian Yell, about the American Indian insurgency in 19th century America. If the word "insurgecy" makes you think about another topic in American affairs, that's not entirely coincidental. Blake's talk was one of those sessions that was entirely gripping from start to finish. He told of his rags to riches story of writing the novel Dances with wolves while living in a car and going from handout to handout among his well-connected Hollywood friends. Finally, the novel was finished, and he got it into the hands of Kevin Costner, who he had worked with years before. The rest is history. A very successful movie, and Oscar, and the freedom to live whatever way he wanted. He talked about how we have become a prisonkeeper society, locking up more than 2 million people, many of whom have never committed a violent crime. He suggested a massive WPA for the non violent criminals to create a living space in the north Great Plains and bring back the buffalo. It wasn't too long before I realized that this was a perfect match piece for Robert Kennedy's talk the day before. Blake also said he is working on a mini-series about Quantrill's Raiders in Kansas during the Civil War for a basic cable channel. At the end, I shook his hand and said in all honesty that it was a privilege getting to know him.

The afternoon afforded me, finally, a time to get a good look at the exhibits. I looked for Ben at Google, but he wasn't around. The wonderful Carol Harker from EBSCO was around, and I mentioned a problem that the facility to send links to EBSCO articles into RefWorks files seems to have disappeared. They are looking into that. I went by the Innovative booth a few times but didn't see anyone I knew. I did talk to the people at the separate booth for Encore and asked, once again the sixty four dollar question - "When is one of the Encore partners going public?" The answer was "Sometime in July." One of the librarians from Scottsdale Public Library was in the booth, and she allowed that Scottsdale may be the first. That would be fitting, since I used that library a lot in my Arizona days, and I'd like to see them make that kind of history. I had a nice talk with a man named Scott Peterson at the CSPAN2 Book TV booth. It was hard to draw him out of a middle-of-the-road position on anything, but he was very knowledgeable and politically aware. He said he recommends that people who get their news from one source, say Fox News, broaden their input a bit. I'm well ahead of that, as I stock my IGoogle account with dozens of news feeds from around the world. Library director Charles Getchell had asked me to keep an eye out for E-Reserve vendors, and I got some literature and a brief demo from Dan at Atlas Systems that provides an e-reserve system that works inside of Blackboard.

The final program of the day was the PLA session with guest keynoter Armistead Maupin. Donna says that Maupin is one of the two remaining authors she had to meet before she dies, so I'll try to make sure that she doesn't meet Murakami for a long time. He was a last-minute replacement for Elizabeth Edwards, and he noted the irony that she broke the engagement to go talk to the Gay community in San Francisco. Further ironic that her husband the candidate is against gay marriage. Maupin went on to describe his early career as a campus conservative, and a hand-picked favorite of Jesse Helms. Eventually they had a falling-out, but not before Helms described him as the "Hope of the future." Maupin talked about his early days of writing "Tales of the city," as a newspaper serial. He said that fan feedback was so important that some of it even inspired changes in the story he would have written. Afterwards, he autographed books in the lobby. You can see from the picture that he was very attentive to Donna as she told him about a decades-long addiction to his work. However, he made every person feel like they were the most important person in the world as they got their 1 minute of face-time with him.

In the evening, we walked around the corner to Georgia Brown's, now one of the trendier eateries in downtown. The specialty is Southern cooking, and everything was wonderful from the fried green tomatoes to the decadent desserts. This was everybody's one blowout dinner in D.C., and we made the most of it.