Barbara Bush

Barbara Bush came to Kepler's in Menlo Park this evening to talk about her recent book, Reflections, with part of the proceeds from the evening going to Project Read. So Georgina, Yenda and I walked over from the library to thank her, and hear her speak.

We got to go "backstage" (to the children's book section) before the talk to meet Mrs. Bush and get our picture taken with her. People always have trouble taking pictures with my camera. The first two ladies who tried ended up taking three odd little video clips of us standing there, waiting to be photographed. I finally figured out why it wasn't working, though, so we at least got one good picture.

The talk itself was short and moderately interesting. There were protestors outside, but there wasn't really much to protest inside. She mostly just shared humorous anecdotes from her book and exclaimed about how much she loves her husband and her children (which, I'd say, is a non-protestable sentiment, regardless of what you think of her husband or son). The Q&A session that followed included such fascinating topics as how many grandchildren she has, and who her favorite author is. The latter led to her comment that she reads "to relax -- to escape from the problems of the world that lay so heavily on my men's shoulders." This escape from problems was evident in a later question, when a woman was cut off in mid-sentence as soon as the phrase "opinion on a woman's right to choose" came up. Mrs. Bush wasn't going to be answering questions like that.

Actually, there were a few other, slightly weird comments (not to mention some weird audience members), but I won't go into them all now. It was definitely a good thing that she was doing for Project Read, so we all appreciate that.

Sushi

I had actually never eaten sushi before tonight, but that's what Eric chose for his birthday dinner. The idea of eating raw fish makes me a bit squeamish, but I figured I ought to at least give it a shot. So I did, and it was alright, though it helped if I didn't think about it too much. I ordered something with a fair amount of non-raw-fish substances in it as well though, so I was okay overall. :-)

Treasures

Finding old family treasures is always fun, and I got a few on Saturday. The first was Great Grandpa Boone's shape note book, that Monee and Pa found and gave to me. It was published in 1899, and has inscriptions in it from the original owner and also from Grandpa Boone when he got it. This isn't the actual copy that he used, but a similar one sent to him by McPherson College in 1991. (He had attended McPherson and donated a lot of money over the years, and my grandparents, I think, asked the college if they could find a copy and send it to him.) It has several of his favorite songs marked in it, though, and one that was a favorite of his father's. Glancing through it so far, I haven't found any songs that I recognize from the Sacred Harp, which is what most shape note people today sing from. But I did find one song that's on Testimony's CD, Echoes. That was kind of neat.

Another neat thing was a newspaper article Monee and Pa dug up somewhere and put in one of the photo albums. It was from 1961 or so, and had a picture of them having just won a "Best Dancers" award in their dance class. Very cool. (By the way — thanks for the dancing genes!)

The last treasure was a video of Grandpa Boone at age 100, reciting the "Vacation Time" poem which was apparently a bit of a signature piece for him, though I don't think I had ever heard it from him myself. It was a somewhat amusing poem, but the best part was to see him recite it. It really felt like he was telling a story, and it just happened to be rhyming as it went along. He stalled somewhere in the middle, not remembering if there were more verses or not, but once he got going again, he was really into it. He put about as much energy into it as you could imagine a 100-year-old man doing, and it was really neat. It was also nice just to see him again, even just in a video. He died when I was in high school, and I had only seen photos of him since then. It brought back lots of memories to see him and hear his voice again.

Happy birthday, Eric S.!

Family Fun

Yesterday we had a family congregation up at Rossmoor for Monee's 75th birthday party. We actually had all the cousins together for the first time in ages, so that was definitely fun. There was also a great deal of hilarity, dressing up, looking at cool old photos, and eating (my goodness, there was a lot of food). Photos are here.