102,137 Deaths in USA from Covid19
Life continues...remotely
Today Enid in Ireland, myself in Key West, joined The Author's Guild and watched Margaret Attwood in Toronto, and Judy Blume in Key West, being celebrated. The moderator was Andrea Pinkney Davis in New York so it sure was an international affair.
The link to
the recording is here. I hope it is still available when you are reading this blog, it is a very enjoyable hour or so.
They are both such wise, smart and humorous women. Margaret Attwood in particular has a great wit about her and quite a glint in her eye; "the others might find out" when declining to name her favourite character! Judy Blume declining too "it is like being asked who my favourite child is".
I liked hearing they were both from a family of readers and were "allowed" to read anything they wanted and could handle, which they took advantage of - Judy reading from her parent's bookshelf and Margaret raiding the bookshelf of the parents of the children she babysat for. I can relate to doing both those things, growing up in a reader family myself too.
That also reminded me of the "Young Adult cart" that existed in our local library when I was about nine or ten. All of the young adult literature books (or maybe just some, the risque ones i.e the Judy Blume's lol!) were stored on a little book trolley behind the main desk. So if you were over fourteen you could show your library card and they would wheel the cart out for you to choose your books. Oh what different times we lived in eh?!!!
Well I don't remember exactly what happened, first of all I think my mother was like "oh just use your older sister's card to get books from there", or at some point I think she said to the librarian, it's fine, I give my permission, just let the twins borrow from the cart if they want. I think if Judy Blume (and Margaret Attwood) heard this they'd get a kick out of it!
All in all a great tribute to them - in their own words really - it was literally a conference call meeting between the three of them, see pic below.
And of course a lovely thing to watch along with Enid. And then talk about with her afterwards, when of course I reminded her that, sure don't we know Judy personally,
having met her a few times now ;) That is a joke, of course we don't know her, but my God she has been the most wonderful gracious person and so giving of her time and thoughts and conversation the times we have met her.
Thanks for the invite to watch this Enid! Great idea!
Stay well friends.
Ps. Click here if you want to see
my handmaid's costume which I wore for a protest outside the Irish Government iro the 8th Amendment (repealed!)