October 23, 2006
Pittsburgh has some great "things to do" that we've been trying to take advantage of this year. As opposed to last year, of course, when I ran around in circles trying to organize conferences during school and David sat watching and shaking his head in faint disgust. One of our new favorite "finds" is the Drew Heinz lecture series. David went to hear Susan Orlean a few weeks ago. He enjoyed reading The Orchid Thief, but she is not, apparently, the world's best lecturer (too much reading, not enough talking).
Tonight, though, we went to see Bill Bryson, who's mostly known for his travel books like A Walk in the Woods, and I'm a Stranger Here Myself. Wow, did we have a fabulous time. Last summer while in The Gambia we each read A Short History of Nearly Everything and enjoyed it thoroughly, though we have yet to read any of his other books (don't worry, they're on hold at the library). He's out promoting his new book, The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid, a memoir about growing up in Des Moines during the fifties.
One of the things Bryson said he missed about the fifties was the humor. He thinks we're too serious now, and no one really jokes with each other the way they used to about small, everyday things. When he was living in New Hampshire in the mid-nineties, there was a storm and his neighbor had a small, bushy tree blow down. The next morning, as his neighbor was cutting the tree up into smaller pieces and putting them on top of his car to haul the whole thing away, Bryson came out and joked: "Oh, I see you're camouflaging your car." David nudged me and said "That's something Papa would say." In fact, much of the evening was a reminder of Papa's humor, bad puns and all, which made it even more enjoyable.
In addition to telling funny stories and reading passages from some of his books, Bryson took questions at the end. The last question was: Why, when you can live anywhere in the world, do you choose to live in England? It turns out his wife is English, and they've lived in England previously, but have also lived in New Hampshire for quite sometime until moving back to England a few years ago. He said it wasn't any one thing about New Hampshire that made them move, though avoiding another New England weather was a reason; it wasn't that we keep electing George Bush, and he'd finally gotten used to driving around with "Live Free or Die" on his license plate, although he'd always thought it was a bit extreme. He could see "Live Free or Bitch Mightily," but thought being willing to die is a little much. I laughed so hard I got tear stains all over the inside of my glasses.
