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April 28, 2002 -
I know. It’s a long way from July 16th to April
28th. I really did start out thinking I was going to
add to this journal every week. Obviously it didn’t happen; so
I’ll do a quick, albeit not very detailed, summary.
From mid-July until September 4th I traveled
around New England some more, still basing in Mitch and Melissa’s
house in Shushan. I put some good mileage onto my red Ford
station wagon driving around New Hampshire, Vermont, Maine,
Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island, and all the way
down to Annapolis, Maryland. I spoke in a lot of libraries, some
homes, a café, and a bunch of stores.
On July 25th I drove into Manhattan to talk at
a bookstore on the upper west side and afterwards, a group of
people, most of whom did not know each other, all went out to
dinner. That night I discovered something wonderful. Coming out
of my talk about "connecting," people make a special
effort to "connect." Even New Yorkers. They talk to
each other while standing in line waiting to have books signed,
they hang around and talk to strangers before they leave. And
when I can get a group together to come out afterwards for
dinner or a snack, everyone leaves having made new friends.
One of my favorite things to do is act as a catalyst or a
matchmaker. I’ve discovered that in the context of a book
signing, people talk to each other. It just happens. I don’t
have to do anything, and I love it.
I have also been amazed at the level of trust people have
shown me as I travel around. My host in NYC left me a key to her
apartment…….and I’d never met or spoken to her; she had
e-mailed me her invitation when she discovered I was going to be
speaking at a bookstore down the street. A woman in Maine wrote
that she was going to be away, but she would leave me the key to
her house if I wanted it.
Most of the time I stayed with people who had e-mailed an
invitation after reading the book….and with Servas hosts as
well. I stayed on a farm in Maine, in a cabin in the woods
without electricity in Vermont. Librarians in Maine fed me
lobster rolls, and Stroudwater Bookstore in New Hampshire took
me on a cruise around the Portsmouth harbor. I went to a church
supper in Maine with my Servas hosts and talked to a group in
the light of a lantern when I was in that cabin in the woods.
On September 4th I abandoned my base in New
York State and took off for the rest of the country. I finished
up on March 25th in New York City after driving
30,000 miles through 41 states. My red Ford, however, never left
Mississippi after an 18-wheeler crushed it on January 24th.
Luckily the truck driver, coming up on my rear, realized he
couldn’t stop (a tree had fallen across Interstate 20 between
Atlanta and New Orleans) and he drove the truck onto the grassy
median, crushing the back left quarter of my car with the side
of his truck. My car was totaled; the truck was barely
scratched; and I walked out, shaking but unhurt. The tow truck
took me to a car rental, and I continued on to New Orleans the
next morning with all my stuff packed into a little two-door
Honda, the biggest car Meridian, Mississippi had to offer. (I
drove a rental, switching when I got to New Orleans into a
bigger car) until late March. I settled with the insurance
company that represented the truck company; they paid for the
rental, my car, and threw in some more for possible injuries.
They were so happy that I was driving a cheap car and had no
obvious injuries that they couldn’t wait to settle, probably
figuring that if I delayed the settlement, I would later
discover all sorts of pain and anguish. The best part of the
settlement was that I didn’t have to go through the whole
thing of selling the car before I left the country.)
So, to back up a bit, I took off on September 4th.
The itinerary on my web site tells where I was, but the details
are interesting too. My first stop was in Rochester, NY. My host
there had read the book and written me a great e-mail. When I
left NY, I was late and, as usual, disorganized. Susan offered
to empty out the car and help me organize everything. For
several hours her home was a massive clutter of my stuff; but
when she finished, my things had diminished and the car was
orderly.
Over the next months I met wonderful people………..of
all ages, professions, economic strata, family configurations,
orientations, and inclinations. I also visited many schools
talking about my kids’ books, especially when my host was a
teacher or a parent of school-aged kids. I had wondered when I
started out if I would experience the same kind of warmth and
welcome in the US that I had found all over the world.
Admittedly, it was a self-selected group: people who had read my
book and those who had chosen to be Servas hosts, welcoming travelers
into their homes. Everyone was fabulous. Not exactly a cross
section, but certainly a lively and rich experience.
On September 11th I was in Grosse Pointe,
Michigan, with a wonderful group of families who had read my
book in their book club and invited me to visit. At the moment
the second plane hit the tower, I was talking to children in a
Catholic school in the gym. When my talk was over at 10:00 o’clock,
the kids filed out and parents carrying chairs filed in. The
school had already called for a prayer vigil. Being with these
warm and caring families was a nurturing way to spend the early
hours after the tragedy.
When I started out on my book tour, I thought maybe I
would write a book about the national nomad experience. But as I
moved through the country, I found that people were sharing
their secrets with me, as I had shared my life with them in the
book. I heard about love and hate, abuse and adventure, affairs
and dysfunctional marriages. I had imagined a book with black
and white retro shots of each host opposite the first page of
her or their chapter. But the more secrets I heard, the more
intimacies I was privy to, the more I knew that I could never
write the experiences in a book. To write their stories would
have been a betrayal of our friendship, however brief. So I
relaxed and just enjoyed the encounters and growing connections
all over the country.
Right from the beginning I have been receiving tons of
e-mails…..not millions, but several thousand. I’ve been
trying to answer all of them. In mid-January I blew it when my
computer stopped telling me which e-mails I had already answered
and which I needed to answer. I had been answering spot letters
for about three weeks and couldn’t face rewriting to all the
people I had already answered. So….there were around 100
people who wrote to me from mid-January to mid-February who
never received an answer. Sorry, if you happen to be one of
them.
I stayed with teachers and ex-priests and their families,
with doctors and professors and nomadic wannabes. With gallery
and coffee shop and bookstore owners, with students, aquarium
educators, contractors, musicians, radio producers. Farmers,
philanthropists, retired everything. It really was an
extraordinary trip.
I’ve made a few interesting observations along the way,
like, lots of people go to bed before ten. Most people put the
toilet paper in so the paper rolls over the top, not under the
bottom. Many people see themselves as having problems that no
one else has ever experienced………..when, in fact, they
would be better served to share their difficulties, because they
would discover that their problems are not unique.
Women often begin their e-mails and conversations with:
you are living my dream. Lots of people feel trapped and don’t
ever expect to get out. And others, women all, have embraced
their independence after divorce or widowhood, and are doing the
things their mates never wanted to do…….like folk dancing, traveling,
art, and community activities. One woman told me she was cooking
the most incredible dishes. Her husband was a meat and potatoes
guy.
I finished my US trip on March 21st and took
off on the 25th for New Zealand. My book came out in
New Zealand and Australia in October and it’s doing well in
both countries. I started back in Coromandel, seeing old
friends, and then, my friend Jean Wells and I started out to
tour New Zealand. We’ve been on the road for three weeks now………..I
talked in Coromandel, Thames, and then we headed for the very
top of the North Island, Cape Reinga. We are planning to go all
the way down to The Bluff, which is the bottom of the South
Island. I’m talking in a few bookstores along the way (see
Itinerary), but mostly just enjoying the people, the fabulous
scenery, and of course, the seafood………tons of mussels, of
course.
At the moment I know that I will be here until the 18th
of June when I fly through LA to Columbus, Ohio to give a talk
for AARP at the art museum on the 24th . "Risk
taking and creativity over 50." The whole idea of the talk,
which is in conjunction with the Grandma Moses exhibit sponsored
by AARP, is to encourage the audience to take some risks, step
outside of the box, experience the joy of embracing the world. I’ve
given workshops for AARP in Orlando, FL, and in Huntsville,
Alabama. It’s slightly different each time and I have a good
time doing it.
And after that? I will probably stay in the US a few
weeks, visit my kids, go to a family reunion in New York state,
and see a few friends. Then????? I don’t know. Possibilities:
Australia, Cuba, eastern Europe, Ivory Coast, or any other
intriguing place that happens across my path. I’m still open
to suggestions. But I’m not keen (that word from being in New
Zealand now for three weeks) on going somewhere where I don’t
speak the language, unless I’m with someone who does.
OK. That’s it for now. I will try not to let so much
time go by this time. So check again in a couple of weeks.
Love,
Rita
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