Biz Weekend Report: The Serpentine Path

I can’t say I was ever very good at deadlines; I once wrote a paper on James Joyce’s Ulysses, and turned it in, oh, let’s say, two months late. My professor was not very happy, but he let it slide.

So, six weeks after the fact, here are some tidbits on the Serpentine Path talk at the Tattered Cover, back on June 20. Each panelist discussed the very different routes they followed in order to get their work in print:

The Take No Prisoners (While Risking Burning Some Bridges) Route:
Janis Hallowell, author of She Was and The Annunciation of Francesca Dunn related her story of calling a major editor in the middle of the night to ask: Why? Why didn’t you want my book?

(She got through; he actually picked up the phone and patiently answered her questions. He also gave her the name of an agent-friend. She called that person–during business hours–the next day. He ended up signing her. And selling her book.)

The Pay Your Money and Take Your Chance Method (But Please Be Sure to Not Include Your Name and Contact Info on the Manuscript):
Fiction wordsmith Steven Wingate approached the pub thing with a practical and reasoned eye: he entered contests. Eventually, this investment paid off when his short story collection, Wifeshopping, won the 2007 Katherine Bakeless Nason Prize for Fiction from the Bread Load Writers’ Conference.

The way he described it, the contest thing was kind of like making a diverse set of modest investments in the stock market, hedging that one would eventually hit it big (that’s before the recent stock market shenanigans, of course).

And big it was: Kirkus Reviews wrote that Wifeshopping was: “Strongly imagined, often deeply moving fiction from a gifted writer who seems to know us better than we know ourselves.”

Go It Alone, and Find a Rapt Audience Route:
Lois Hjelmsted survived breast cancer–and then wrote a touching memoir of her experience as a way of helping others through such trials. But she never bothered to find a publisher.

No matter–she published Fine Black Lines herself, and has taken her message on the road, speaking more than 530 times to a diverse population in all 50 states, England, and Canada, including patients, professionals, cancer support groups, women’s groups, and book clubs.

The Who Says Memoirs Don’t Sell? Route:
Kim Field signed with Denver agent Kristin Nelson after listening to Kristin at one of the Lighthouse Writers Buzz events several years ago, and hasn’t looked back since.

Her memoir, No Place Safe, received the Colorado Book Award for nonfiction in 2008. Currently, Kim is working on a novel–at 4:30 AM each and every morning. And then she goes to work at a full-time job. Now that sounds like dedication.

(And boy does that makes me feel like a lazybones….)

So, if there’s one thing to take away from these stories, it’s this: No matter how you find your way into print, you must do it with a tremendous amount of passion, focus, and energy.

And a deep belief in yourself.

–MJH

 

This felony won’t get you 150 years

It was a week and a half ago, the Business Weekend, Lit Fest 2009, and the topic was “Breaking and Entering”—essentially, a primer on creating a life in writing. We’d already heard a lot of sobering news from the publishing types. People were looking for glimmers of hope, and we assembled just the crack team to deliver.

Geiser, Kelly, and McDonald in the Lighthouse (tm) soft focus

First of all, these three women could read Jack Nicholson’s manuscript-in-progress from The Shining and make it darned entertaining: Shana Kelly, formerly of the William Morris Agency; Elizabeth Geiser, whose spent her career in publishing and founded DU’s Publishing Institute; Cara McDonald, who was editor at 5280 and other lifestyle magazines for years and years before becoming a freelance writer and editor. 

No, I’m not an apologist for the random workings of our panel-creating ways. This seemingly mismatched olio produced entertaining and helpful anecdotes and some bits of wisdom that emerged, finally, as the “truths of the day,” so far as we could see.  As far as I could, anyway, but I’m nearsighted. 

folks are rapt

 

• Some success stories have everything to do with stacking the deck in your own favor, building the pedigree in the great programs, and then getting a stroke of luck. Curtis Sittenfeld, the young woman who broke in with the novel Prep (and who Shana Kelly represented), was one of those people.  She went for it, the stars aligned, and she got it.
• Some success stories have everything to do with the stroke of luck.  Elizabeth Geiser recounted the tale of a writer who also tried to do all the right things, but doors kept slamming in his face. His submissions were crossing in the mail with rejections.  Until one fateful seder he attended in New York City, where he met the person who would introduce him to the editor who finally took him on. He became a bestselling author.
• Cara talked of the fine balance between persistence and annoyance. Being persistent, if your work can back it up, can get you in. Being a pest just gets you swatted down.
• Elizabeth, more of a phone woman than a Facebooker, Twitterer, or e-mailer, on several occasions apologized for her profession. We accepted her apology.
• All of the women echoed the sentiment that “being beautiful is not enough.” There also has to be an energy to your work and your persona that lifts off the page.  Cara calls it “the love.” She told the anecdote of the overlooked intern who presented an idea to the magazine that knocked everyone’s socks off. Look for the “socks off” moments. To do this, you must immerse yourself in serious study of what’s going on in the field you’re trying to break into 
• …which is another way of again echoing the previous panel, this elementary notion of “doing one’s homework.” For example, Cara said it was quite rare for someone to approach her and say, “Here, I know you all put together a Valentine’s issue every year, and this is a pitch to provide content for that.” Elizabeth concurred and said it’s the writer’s job to understand how the bottom line runs publishing, and to try to envision where their project fits in that scenario. 
• If you really love it, you’ll find a way to do it, even in these challenging times.

Up next, four authors talk about the serpentine path they took to publication.

 

Intern’s Report: Zee party

Ed. note: Once again, our trusty intern Laurel Janeen Smith is on the case, this time chatting up the final Lit Fest party. Next up is the report from the Business weekend, where no one was spotted crying this year. Thanks, Laurel!

What better way to mourn the ending of Lit Fest than a garden party with two open bars? Well I suppose we could have had a garden party with two open bars, a live circus and Mike in a clown suit… Andrea, are you getting this down for next year? Nevertheless, even without circus performers, Saturday night’s party rocked with good food, good conversation and some of the most aggressive mingling I have ever seen.

If there is one thing Lighthouse members have in common (besides being writers, of course) it is that they like to talk. I came to the party not knowing anyone besides a few people I had met in workshops, but I found myself chatting with dozens of people. Every time I found myself standing alone, even if it was just for a moment, someone would swoop in, grab me by the shoulder and ask me a thousand questions like: what am I doing at the Lighthouse, how do I like it, what kind of writing do I do, what do I study at school, what am I passionate about, where did I come from, where am I going and what is my life philosophy? Whew, I never imagined the Lighthouse crowd would be more exhausting than my college friends.

Mike Henry doing the poet's softshoe at Lit Fest farewell.

If there is one thing I learned at the soiree, it’s that as soon as you step inside the Ferril, the Lighthouse will grab you by the right hand (or left if you’re a lefty) and won’t let go until your passions are sparked, your writing is improved and you’ve learned a little bit about the biz. Even after all that you will be lucky to get away. The Lighthouse is a community that looks out for all its members. It supports us, and keeps us going when the writing is hard, and let’s face it, its always hard.  

One great symbol of the Lighthouse community was presented at the Litfest closing party. The Beacon Award represents the great partnership and mutual appreciation between students and faculty, and the skills, support and inspiration that a faculty member graciously shares with his/her students. A committee of board members and Lighthouse members decides the award recipient based on essays written by students. Selections of these essays were read, and they were powerful, showing not only what great writers we have, but also how much they have gained from the Lighthouse faculty. 

The 2008 award was announced first. It was supposed to be awarded in April but we had that freak spring snowstorm so not too many made it to the award ceremony. So in true Lighthouse fashion in front of students, faculty, board members and New York agents and editors, Bill Henderson was re-awarded the Beacon Award.

Following Bill, the Lighthouse board awarded Alexandre Philippe the 2009 Beacon award. As Alexandre took the microphone and accepted the award, his voice caught and Andrea was brought to tears, which spurred Alexandre’s tears. Soon everyone was sniffling. These people are family, and they are so happy to have each other, I thought.   

After the award ceremony it was back to the hanging around the bars, meeting new faces and sharing smiles and stories.

I snuck out just after the sun set and people were dispersing. I waved goodbye to the Lighthouse community happy to be apart of it. Bring it on out world. I’ve got Lighthouse by my side now.

Cheers,
Laurel

 

Lit Fest report: The Beacon Award

It’s straight out of Gatsby, except there are no dead people involved. A beautiful home abutting the Botanical Gardens, 120 happy people, sipping wine and sampling tasty vittles. Agents and editors being stalked by well-meaning writers with a manuscript in their back pocket. I’ll leave further reports on the actual party to Laurel, our capable intern reporter, and focus instead on one part of the program.

Alexandre O. Philippe receives the second annual Beacon Award, sponsored by Lighthouse members and awarded to an outstanding Lighthouse instructor each year.

For the second year in a row, Lighthouse faculty were up for a member-sponsored teaching award of $1,000, plus the handsomest darned statue you ever did see.  The first award went to William Haywood Henderson, maestro to the novelists (and humanists) of the world since 2001, who has inspired everyone from published authors to would-be first timers to do their work, to be good, and to trust that if they sweat and cry and toil enough, it’ll get there. 

This year, the award went to Alexandre O. Philippe, who joined the Lighthouse faculty in 2000, and quickly became one of the most popular, cult-like figures to ever cross our threshold. His first feature-length film, Chick Flick: The Miracle Mike Story, was created with the help of many of the students in those early classes–some of whom continue to work with him today. 

His current project, The People vs. George Lucas, has captured the imagination, passion, and even indignation of people all over the world. It will be completed and released next year, and you can see the trailer here. Alexandre continues, despite all of his personal and commercial projects, to teach a diligent group of screenwriters in our Master Screenwriting workshop, as well as teaching dozens of popular one-day workshops. He’s also on the faculty at the Grand Lake Retreat (pdf) this year, so if you want to get in on some Philippeness, we know just the place to do it. (Plus, and this can’t be overstated, there’s game night.)

Thanks to all who made it to the party, and to Alexandre for his acceptance speech that made at least one person an emotional wreck (she shall go unnamed), and to Jay and Emily, who put on the party (about which more will be posted later), and to Charles & Carleen, who led the Beacon Award committee, and to all of you, who made this year’s Lit Fest the grandest, most devilishly fun, and most successful yet.

 

Intern Report on the Salon: The Niche

Our super talented intern Laurel Janeen Smith is back at it, and getting saucier as she goes. For those of you who missed the final party, she’s got a blog slated for that as well…  Thanks, all, for making this the biggest, best Lit Fest ever.

Carleen Brice, Mario Acevedo, and William Haywood Henderson speak to a narrow room about narrow categories.

Andrea opened up the salon with a very controversial question: Is it niche (nitch) or niche (neesh)? The audience was split which surprised me because we all know its niche (nitch) right? This was not the only unanswered question of the evening. I myself left the Wynkoop brewery wondering if the advantages of having niche outweigh the often pain in the ass expectations it can bring with it. 

We all just want to write, but in this day and age writers are expected to help with the marketing of their own books. Putting a book in a niche helps to market to a very specific audience that is more likely to be interested in the book than if it was marketed to the masses. But as writers we don’t to want to write to fit a formula, we just want to write what compels and obsesses us.

The salon In and Out of the Niche featured three panelists who have all been niched and lived to tell about it.  Author Carleen Brice’s niche has less to do with her writing, and more do to do with the fact that she’s black. She writes fiction, a lot of which, according to her readers, has nothing to do with race. Sill her books are usually found snuggled in the black author section of bookstores.

Mario Acevedo, accomplished vampire writer and president of the local chapter of Mystery Writers of America, almost suffered the same fate as Carleen, only instead of the black shelf, he was destined for the Latino shelf via his imprint, Rayo. Fortunately, after trial and error Mario’s publishers realized Latino readers, even though they are Latino, don’t look for vampire books in the Latino section and Mario ended up being more appropriately categorized as “urban fantasy.”    

Bill Henderson’s self-described niche is gay/straight/western/woman’s/cowboy/historical/landscape, whatever that means. When Bill went on to publish his first book he had the choice of what bookshelf it would end up on. A small press and a gay publishing company were both interested but he went with the gay press because they had more money. The book wasn’t exactly a typical gay novel, it just happened to have one gay character.     

The authors all found creative ways to either get past their niche or embrace it. Carleen embraced it creating the blog White Readers Meet Black Authors which includes a very funny video officially welcoming white folks like me to the black author section of the bookstore. This way Carleen is able to keep her key marketing group and appeal to a wider audience. Mario took a less subtle approach to getting past his niche with his book titles. Anyone browsing titles like The Undead Kama Sutra, Jailbait Zombie and The Nymphos of Rocky Flats knows that they can’t be just your average vampire stories. Mario does admit that his book titles keep him out of high school libraries but who cares; they’re brilliant. Bill’s approach to escaping the niche is probably the simplest: he just keeps writing what he loves to write. His second book had no gay characters in it and is set in the West, but is not a western and publishers had a hard time categorizing it and that’s just the way it should be. Bill sometimes regrets going to the gay press for his first book, but in the end does it matter? Bill is a successful writer, great teacher and writes what he wants. Enough for me.

Whether or not taking on the niche is right for you I don’t know, I think that’s a rather personal question. All our panelists did it and managed to not be too constrained by it. Bill wrote two books after is first “gay” novel, neither of which are “gay.” Mario has considered the young adult genre and Carleen is looking at doing a graphic novel.

Keep up with these guys because I expect we will be seeing a lot them in the future. I highly recommend checking out Mario’s Zombie Lego videos . You can catch Bill’s website here.

Cheers,
Laurel

 

Lit Fest Participant Reading II, unleashed

Okay, so the usual: Alto’s a classy, lovely restaurant, and they’ve mastered the art of sashaying through the crowd during a reading and silently picking up cues about who wants food or drink (I didn’t even order that extra glass of wine, but the waiter said he “sensed” I might want it).  This time, the first time I’ve ever known a Lighthouse reading to contain long strings of profanity (of the best kind, of course), we were separated from the other diners by a sheer curtain. So…

Forty-five or fifty of us packed the joint, and Lighthouse New Media Czarina Laureen Harris did us the honor of kicking things off by reading part of her novel from her iPod. ”It’s kind of hard to explain,” she started. “In the novel, people are having other people’s dreams, and in this scene a guy’s having a nightmare. Someone else’s nightmare.” To say it was funny is to understate it, but I just loved how she didn’t miss a beat — get up, read from your iPod, resume the Lighthouse Twitter update stream.  Wow.

Jim Ringel read his new opening to his novel (great stuff), Laura Stine bewitched us with poetry, and Zack D. did a great job with some serious samurai action, and on and on until we hit the spoken word peeps.  Mark, Vicki, and Angela–three readers who needed no notes–setting a new standard for Lighthouse?  I was impressed and surprised. Lynn Wagner read a poem that must be published, pronto: dogs, pee, lovers. Rosemary, Judith, and Cara read excerpts from riveting memoirs.  

Yes, I did take pictures, and yes, they’re all blurry.  I’ll upload them later… (let the painful wait begin). Thanks, all you readers, for an entertaining evening, emcee Mike Henry who gave me an emcee break, and Gary Schanbacher for all your help. And Erika Krouse for sharing my extra wine. And Tiffany and John for being funny and supportive of my bad photography. Laura S. for bringing an Australian to the reading. And Kerry Booth for schlepping stuff out to the car so I could be lazy. And, of course, Laureen, for taking us to the new century with Twitter.

See you all at the Niche tonight, 7:30 drinks/ 8 PM start @ the Wynkoop (upstairs Morey room).

 

Lit Fest Participant Reading I

Fifty plus packed the downstairs lounge at The Jet Hotel to hear the people read.

It all started with us surprising the folks at The Jet Hotelwith our arrival, and it ended with a life-saving Heimlich maneuver over organic noodles.  In between, we heard great stories about false prophets, people throwing furniture from houses, bossiness, some demons being worse than others, a woman dreaming in an old claw-foot tub, a little girl packing her tiny suitcases, and a dog named Winston Churchill.  All of you were amazing.  Quote from instructor Jennifer Itell: “I left there marveling at the amount of talent in the world.”  True, true.

Lit Fest Participant Reading, Part II on Wednesday @ Alto Restaurant (drinks 7:30; start at 8:00 PM).

 

Intern’s report: Obsession Salon

Laurel Smith’s back at it: a report on the incredibly entertaining, funny, smart salon on obsession presented by Alexandre O. Philippe (Lighthouse & Cinema Vertige) and Garrett Ammon (Ballet Nouveau Colorado).

Mike Henry, Garrett Ammon and Alexandre Philippe on obsession.

Last night we packed the studio at 910 Arts sipping our beers and munching on sliced meat. Garrett Ammon and Alexandre Philippe provided the evening’s entertainment, delighting us with stories of their obsessions.

Garrett is the artistic director at Ballet Nouveau Colorado and his obsession is, appropriately, dance. Garrett had a childhood of artistic experimentation, trying out choir, only to have the self-realization that he’s not a singer. He moved on to theatre and suffered from stage fright. When he found dance something clicked.

 ”I found a place where I can be me,” he said.

 I think that’s what leads a lot of us to our obsessions. When I was in high school I became obsessed with Rocky Horror Picture Show for that reason. For those of you who don’t know, RHPS is a cult film about alien transvestites. As an awkward teenager who didn’t fit in at school, I loved putting on my fishnets every Saturday night to shout profanities at a movie screen for 90 minutes with my fellow societal outliers. Thank god I grew out of that obsession.  

Alexandre, on the other hand, never grew out of his childhood obsession. He is the creative director at Cinema Vertige and an award winning film director (and the director of screenwriting at Lighthouse!). His obsession is George Lucas. Now this was a little bit difficult for me to understand. I shamefully must admit, I have never seen a Star Wars movie, and had no idea what Alexandre was talking about most of the night. Despite this, by the end of the night Alexandre had me convinced that I too was obsessed with George Lucas.  Passion must be contagious.

Alexandre uses film to express his passion for George Lucas in the documentary The People vs. George Lucas. In creating the documentary he found others that shared his obsession who used their own art mediums, such as puppets, music, Legos and cartoons, to express what it means to be obsessed with George Lucas.

We use art to express our obsessions. Garrett made the move from dancer to choreographer because he had tons of ideas and didn’t know how to express them. Through choreography Garrett explores these ideas, which too end up becoming obsessions. His most recent obsession is our own Mike Henry. Garrett combined Mike’s poetry with dance and music, and from the short clip we all got see, the results were powerful and moving.

Most of us at the Lighthouse are not choreographers or filmmakers but we all have obsessions that drive our work. Here are some of Alexandre and Garrett’s final thoughts on how our obsessions can guide us:

-Don’t write what you know. Write what obsesses you.
-Creative minds have endless ideas, far too many to follow through with in a lifetime. Pick an idea that evokes something that grabs you powerfully enough that you can take the project to completion.
-Finish what you do!
-Collaborate with other writers.

And finally…
-Don’t do like George Lucas.

If you missed last night or if you just need an extra dose of obsession I recommend you check out the book The Creative Habit by Twyla Tharp or Episode 30 from This American Life titled obsession.

 Still haven’t gotten enough obsession?  Blog about it. What obsesses you?

Cheers,
Laurel

 

Intern’s report: Writing in Changing times

Ed note: Lighthouse brings on an intern each summer to keep us current and help them see some of the writing world first-hand. This year Brian Kiteley recommended a remarkable young woman named Laurel Smith, who’s a senior at the University of Denver.  Here’s her first report from Lit Fest:

Let me start by introducing myself. I am a 22-year-old writer getting ready to enter the big scary post college world with nothing but a degree in memoir and ambition in hand. Interning at the Lighthouse is the final bridge I will cross before I get my degree, and my last chance to soak up all the knowledge I can to help me survive in the real world.

Last night I went to Lit Fest’s first salon ready to start filling my real world survival kit. I joined a roomful of other writers at the swanky Baurs restaurant with pen, paper and of course a glass of Melbec in hand. Novelist Laura Hendrie began the discussion of writing in the changing times. She spoke of her own experiences and a time when she could survive simply by writing, and how now she has to be part of the real world to make a living doing what most writers including herself dread; math.

Great, I sighed. For me, these aren’t changing times, but rather the only I’ve known and I am entering it knowing that writers who have been successful their entire careers are doing math to pay the bills.

Literary non-fiction writer Harrison Candelaria Fletcher joined Laura in the discussion. Earlier in his life Harrison had the kind of job young graduates like myself can only dream about: he was a columnist, but he quit that job. Wait…What? He had steady income as a writer and he quit. Being the young unemployed writer that I am, this was hard to understand. Harrison went on to explain that he was tired of getting up at 5:30am to go write in his basement. Okay, now that is something I can understand. “You have to separate writing for money and writing for love,” he said.

Great! I exclaimed. I have never been paid for my writing, and I love it. I must be on the right track to becoming a great writer.

For those of you who missed out on the salon or were too busy sipping your martinis to whip out a pen, here are the final tips given by the Laura and Harrison.

Laura’s Tips:
1. Read to find your own standards.
2. Learn to be alone with yourself.
3. Remember you are in the world (not necessarily of it), and should take in all you can.
4. In times of spasm or transition make a record of what you think and feel.
5. Shape everything important to you into writing.
6. Don’t pretend that you’re free of everything around you.
7. Think for yourself. Know what you think and put it out there.

Harrison’s Tips:
1. Subscribe to literary magazines.
2. Join a writing group. This will sustain you when all else fails.
3. Go to readings and support what you do.
4. Buy literature from small bookstores.
5. Write what you want to read.

If you missed last night’s salon, don’t panic. There’s another salon tonight at 8 at 910 Arts (910 Santa Fe Dr.) Tonight’s topic: obsession. Hope to see you there!

Cheers,
Laurel

 

Report from the salon: Writing in Changing Times

Harrison Candelaria Fletcher and two people who would be identifiable if not for the photography skills of certain blog posters.

Let’s face it, these venues that Josh D’s been getting us are a bit swanky for our purposes, but I could get way used to them. In these rarefied spaces you can hear; you can see; you can smell and taste and luxuriate. There’s food and drink. Various delicacies like stuffed mozzarella and calamari and linen tablecloths, silver, Tangueray & tonics — and some good, high-calorie talk from Harrison Candelaria Fletcher and Laura Hendrie, two of the new heroes of my growing cadre of heroes since Lit Fest started.

Let me back up. 

Forty of us gathered to listen to Harrison and Laura take on the topic of “Writing in Changing Times” (a topic with “euphemism” written all over it). Laura was teaching a course on dialogue for Lit Fest, so I sent her an e-mail asking if I could have a drink waiting for her when she arrived for this salon talk. And she wrote back, “Sure! How about some wine or beer or scotch or vodka?”  So when she arrived, of course, she ordered gin and tonic.  She talked at first about a Tom Stoppard quote about what we as writers and people have experienced since 9/11:

“The world is in spasm. When societies are in spasm people let go of some of their habits and assumptions. This can be the mark of maturity and progress in certain instances but in others we are letting go of something hard-won, and something we ought not to let go of. It has never been more important that we should recognize the difference between cases.”

and later, in explaining the above quote, Stoppard says:

“I guess it’s pretty clear to me what I was thinking of, which is that out of fear — not necessarily for oneself, but for family and so on, or one’s fellow man, if you like, but out of some kind of fear –one lets go of certain principles, like the principle of free expression, of free assembly. One is encouraged to compromise in the direction of some kind of state security.”

So, her argument was that out of fear, we were giving up our freedom, not just civic freedoms, but freedom of thought and action and, more to the point, literary freedom.  Here Harrison came in and gave it a spin.  I encouraged fisticuffs, but they ended up finding endless points of agreement. He said that during the Chicano movement (in the height of which his mother, a Chicana, was an artist and he was a wee lad), none of the artists cared who published or bought their art, or who accepted it. They just created it. Heedlessly. And that’s what we should be doing now–in fact, comfort can be anathema to artistic discovery and freedom and pushing the boundaries. (I totally paraphrase, here. Not that that’s not obvious.)  Here was the money quote, as far as I’m concerned:

You have to decide what you can live with, what you really need, and what you can live without.

Laura agreed, and they talked about ridding yourself of the assumptions of what writers can and can’t do. Can a  writer work at Starbucks? In medical coding? As a … nonprofit administrator?  (Okay, I added that last part.)  Of course, and it’s because they’re in the world (if not “of” the world) that they have material to write about. We’ve been spoiled over the years (or some of us have, they said) in thinking we can sit around and teach and write and be separate from the world. Get dirty and in it and say something about it.

Like the Ramones did? And the Clash. And the people of the Chicano movement. For over an hour, they smartly, provocatively, and wittily worked through and hashed out ideas. Ultimately, they said this: we’re on the cusp of something, and that’s when great art is created–if you don’t succumb to fear (cf. Stoppard, above). A lot more that’s really smart was said, but we’ll get others to post about it. (Check out Laureen’s live tweets, por ejemplo.)

The story’s not completely over. One loss: it’s final, the fate of the Lighthouse microphone and speaker. They… didn’t make it.  They’re both kaput.  In our infectiousness, I think we also ruined Baur’s audio system, which as far as I know has worked since the beginning of time.  So… let’s leave it at that until someone smart can post. 

Thanks, Laura and Harrison, for your inspiring and inspired talk tonight.  And thanks to Gary S., Rosemary L., Jan M., our intern Laurel S. (NOT Laurelle), Laureen our New Media Czarina, and everyone else who helped with this event. Our waiter was really nice. Hope to see you all at Alexandre Philippe and Garrett Ammon’s talk on “My Obsession” tomorrow at 910 Arts, 910 Santa Fe, 7:30 drinks/ 8:00 PM program.