Posted: 22 May 2014- David Lebovtz
Unfortunately, book tours offer
little – if any – free time. Sometimes you want to check out places that are
miles away from your hotel, which are hopeless causes (although not always.)
But since publishers and venues are flying you around, they’re not footing the
bill for a leisurely evening with friends, or with copious time to explore the
city. (And I don’t blame them.) So you value every precious second you have.
Your best bet is to remain within a close radius of your hotel. If you’re fortunate,
you can race to a Japanese restaurant, cafe, or doughnut shop. Other times,
you’re happy to lie in a nice bed and watch The View.
For the most part, the weather on my
tour was spectacular. And while I can’t take credit for that, still, people
thanked me for bringing sunny skies with me, wherever I went. In Seattle, I hit
the city during one of the rare thirty days of sunshine (out of three hundred
and sixty-five days.) But not always. Heading to Miami, just as we were poised
to take off on the runway, our plane turned around and headed back to the gate
to get more fuel because a hurricane warning in Florida, which might force us
to land elsewhere. (We ended up arriving okay, but we circled high above the
Miami airport for a couple of hours, waiting for it to reopen.) Yet the next
day in Miami, the skies were spectacular.
And for my last city and stop of the
tour, I had the pleasure of sitting on a green, grassy lawn at the Washington, D.C.
farmers’ market, in the nation’s capital, signing books and
chatting to shoppers, who were loading up their baskets with bunches of
asparagus, strawberries, and radishes as well as first-of-the-season tomatoes
and excellent cheeses.
Since I miraculously ended up with a
rare, free afternoon the following day, I hoofed it over to the National Museum
of American History at the Smithsonian, to check out Food:
Transforming the American Table, 1950-2000.
The exhibit highlights how American
eating and shopping habits have changed during those five decades, and the
museum compiled this retrospective to show the progression and evolution of the
changes leading up to what shows up at the American table.
Continue Reading Food:
Transforming the American Table 1950-2000, at the Smithsonian Museum...
No comments:
Post a Comment