Two Very Strong Book Readings

Couldn't have asked for more

First, the most emotional gathering at Jesup Memorial Library in Bar Harbor where (see previous post) I lost my composure before I even got started. It was so emotional for me.

Then, the next evening, the library over in Southwest Harbot, Maine,  The place was so crowded people were sitting in every chair they had available and anything else they could find. A packed house and, atain, everyone was attentive and encouraging and when Q and A time came, a fellow in the way back whom I didn't recognize began askiing some very personal questions, knowledgeable of me more than I could imagine. I had spoken about the man who designed our cabin on the island,  designed Moosewood so perfectly that we knew first time we saw it, it was not just our house but, instantly, our home!. I had roundly praised that builder for talking us out of building the much larger place we had thought we wanted. He reminded us that we had told  him we wanted to "simplify, simplify, simplify." He could have made more by building the bigger place but persuaded us to go much smaller, simpler. And we did.  Thanks to a builder who talked himself out of making more money because he was honest.

And that fellow back in the corner -- heavier and bearded than we had known him -- was indeed that builder, Vic Mercer. What a wonderful surprise. 

BTW, the bookselleers at the event ran out of books and had to promise to get more the next day for people shorted. Flattering. 

Tomorrow, moving on to Camden hoping everything goes even half as well as they've gone so far, 

Signing Books and Hoping ... 

Signed forty books for a local Maine  book store today. Always a pleasure to do that, trying to imagine the people who will buy them and read them and get from them --- What? 

From the reader comments I've already received I'm encouraged to assume that the folks buying those copies I signed today will find "very good writing" ... "thoughtful and insightful" .... "stories of your TV years, the people and places and lessons learned, as well as your creating new and unique lives on the small island enthralled me all along" .... "Rapturous." 

Not all, to be sure, but some of the readers of those copies I just signed, I hope, will finish the book with feelings like those. And I hope some of them will tell me.

If only I could always remember the blessings of this day...

What a day! This has been the most exciting, warming and gratifying --- while at the same time the most emotional -- day I've yet had in these book tour travels.

First, was "back home." Bar Harbor gazing across at Bar Island, home for thirteen best years of our lives. And here to talk about those years, that time, and how important they were to us and how we have never been the same and won't be. Moosewood, as  we called our island cabin, changed us.

No, that's not right. Moosewood didn't change us. God used our time at Moosewood, those thirteen years, to spur us to change ourselves.

Now we were back, greeting old friends, put up by Ivan and Sherry in the precious old cottage, oldest remaining home in the town which, slated for demolition to make room for condos, was rescued by Ivan who had it moved and repositioned and lovingly reconstructed, a monumental task quite hard to believe. It used to belong to a woman named "Thankful" so that's the name it retains as they rent it  out to visitors to town.

Dinner friends last nigh and then this morning, in heavy rain, a tour of Acadia National Park whose visitor center welcoming film I voiced a while back. And this afternoon on to the local library for a book-reading and signing and there was the problem. Not that so many people showed up they had to keep adding chairs both downstairs and up in the balconies looking down at the main floor.

And I started to speak.

Speak ... and cry. My voice breaking and I largely unable to speak.

"This is hard," I got out. And it was. Here so many people we had known and/or still knew. Here was beloved past before us in this library in which we too had spent much time writing, researching, leaning. And I was so choked up I had to struggle mightily to regain enough of my frayed composure to go on speaking. The intense interest and what sure seemed like love from so many in the crowd buoyed me and I reclaimed my voice and spent the next hour with them recollecting, and  being grateful. And they stayed with me. All stayed with me and when it was over and God praised, many filed over to the signing table and the joy and gratitude bounced back and forth for almost another hour.

And I was exhausted! Because of the rain, the second half of the afternoon had to be postponed till tomorrow --- the walking tour we will lead out to and across the island. Which, I know, will be another testing time for both Jo and me. The library is using the event as a fundraiser, collecting $150 per person and they're signed up to capacity. Amazing!  But so many people who live around Bar Harbor have never been across to the island, just seen it every day from the town pier and wondered what it must be like. We'll be proud to show them. Proud but, I suspect, also greatly emotional.

Worth it, though, to continue our assignment of using this experience we were given by God to praise God..