Home, Again

The final few days of the Atlanta visit were too crowded to find time to write here. Though the other events (there were eight scheduled in all, over a four day period) were hits and misses. Borders bookstore forgot to schedule, despite two confirming phone calls, and an independent book store there didn't get it in its newsletter, so not much happened either. Plus, one of the events that was scheduled at the very last minute went out to only ten people via email and attracted no one. So, of the eight events, five of them actually happened! On the other hand, those five were wonderful. Each discussion had its own flavor, though all tended to be deeply personal and intimate, since each group contained participants who were working with fresh, raw grief.

The radio show, an hour-long interview, was really fun. I've always loved radio, as the most intimate medium. In fact, I cohosted a weekly call-in show back in Twin Falls, Idaho in 1977 I think it was. We called it "Just Between Us," and the way we'd approach the evening was to drive out in the Idaho desert about an hour beforehand and get stoned. She'd bring the car, I'd bring the joint. Then, we'd starting talking about something deeply meaningful to us as women, drive back to the station, sit in our seats with headphones on, greet the technical guy, and keep on talking. We had a small, but fiercely loyal audience. Then came our Waterloo, when we decided to research the history of Easter, and put on a show about its origins. Well, little did we know that we were going to discover the Easter comes from oestrus, relating to estrus, eggs, fertility, menstruation and so on, with pagan connotations! We bravely brought all this info to the show, and well, that was too much for Twin Falls of that era, a town in which social organizations were all based on organized religions, and our radio show was summarily shut down. Anyway, the interview in Atlanta will become a podcast soon, and I'll figure out how to tell you how to listen to it, if you're interested.

Though I no longer need marijuana to fuel my conversations, I still love radio and find it very congenial to my particular personality and voice.

This is my last post until the next trip, which starts on July 25.