I'm in Elon, NC now, waiting for dinner with Ripton. I'm driving to McCormick, South Carolina later tonight. Jerry and Paula Goldman invited me there. I'm meeting with a community of people tomorrow, and the Goldman's book club, and with Friends of the Library on Wednesday.

This is McCormick... the COUNTY.

This is the Goldmans... !
"Paula and Jerry Goldman retired to Savannah Lakes Village in November 1999 after spending 27 years in Oceanside, New York. They have many interests which include golfing, singing, working with children in the McCormick County Public Schools, the McCormick County Democratic Party and belonging to three book clubs. They have three married daughters who live in Westfield, MA, New Orleans, LA and Houston, TX and who, in four years, have produced six grandchildren. The oldest will be five and the youngest will be one at the end of March. Since Paula insists on celebrating each grandchild's birthday in person, we spend quite a bit of time on the road. It must have been serendipity that caused us to visit North Conway, NH last August after visiting our daughter in MA, and we met Michael Rosen at White Birch Books. It just proves what an interesting journey life is!"

I've never been invited to a community as I've been invited here. Thank you, Paula and Jerry, and to the people I will meet. I appreciate your warmth.

"The manager [Bobby Valentine] told the student [Carlos Suarez] he had the physical tools to be a major leaguer. The trick, he added, was to conquer the game in the mind." ~ The New York Times, Corey Kilgannon.

Carlos stopped going to his Queens College classes last semester. We didn't know - yes, if you've read What Else But Home, it's deja vu all over again [that's a baseball term!].

This is Carlos in our kitchen, on his birthday. He's holding a bat. It's hard to see.

He stopped class because he was lost and confused without baseball - he'd used up his eligibility. There's a story there. It doesn't matter here. Enough to say Bobby Valentine told Carlos he had to do well in school, he had to do well in baseball, and that the Mets and Yankees would be watching him. Let's say that some issues got in the way. Let's say that Carlos has learned.

This is Carlos, with his cake and candles...

Bobby Valentine gave Carlos another chance. Another route. A hope. He wrote to Todd Marlin, then general manager of the Bridgeport Bluefish. Todd Marlin arranged for Carlos to try out. He told us before hand that 13 of his players were former Major Leaguers, not to expect much more than an evaluation and if he were up to it, recommendations to other teams in another Independent League. That's exactly what happened. Except it was late July or August, Independent League teams don't play late into autumn - Carlos and I both assumed that Todd Marlin meant to try out this Spring, 2010. But he didn't. He meant then.

It was too late by the time we realized.

Todd Marlin is now managing director of the Washington Wildthings, in Washington, PA. He's an extraordinary man. He's recommended Carlos to try out for Frontier League teams. And we'll figure at least one other league to try out for. We'll write to Todd Marlin again. I know he'll answer.

So Carlos and I took a long LONG sheet of paper. We made a plan, from winter through spring. Tryouts are in early May. Carlos has been running, going to the gym, losing weight, getting stronger, batting and practicing the infield. We figured out how much it was going to cost to pay for the batting cage, to buy bats, batting gloves, comfortable sneakers, gasoline to get to tryouts, tolls, everything we could think of, we made a budget. It is a lot of money. More than we thought. Carlos wrote to three of our friends, asking for help, dividing costs into quarters. Everyone agreed to help Carlos go after this dream. I wont embarrass my friends by mentioning their names, but they are good friends. Mary Spink, from LESPMHA, agreed to be a fiscal sponsor supporting Carlos.

This is a letter from one of our friends. "Dear Carlos, We really believe in you!..." it says. That's friendship.

The Frontier League tryout is early in May.

Follow Carlos here. He's decided he doesn't want to be middle aged, to look back and never have tried for this. He's okay with what happens, as long as he walks through a brick wall to get there - that's John Howard's saying. Apropos. But I'm not saying anything. Much.

It's on the line.

It's snowing here in New York...

I've been riding my bike across town. That's my bike, the red one.

Everyman, my normal coffee spot, is closed. I came back east, past Mary Help of Christians church on 12th Street, which the Archdiocese has slotted to close - they're apparently open now only for Sunday mass.

Last night, I met the parents' group at Brooklyn Friends School, where our 17 year old Morgan still goes, from where Ripton graduated. A spoke about What Else But Home, read a short section, and one woman asked what I've learned.

I've learned a great deal. I remembered Emanual Levinas, the French philosopher, speaking about Cain and Abel. Cain kills and buries Abel. God asks Cain where his brother might be. "Am I my brother's keeper?" Cain asks God.

Most interpretations castigate Cain for mocking God in his answer. Levinas says no. Cain isn't mocking God. Cain is asking a question of ontology, of existence, devoid of ethics. Am I responsible for my brothers and sisters, for my fellows?

Yes, Levinas answers. We are each responsible for each other, "and I more than anyone else."

This asymmetry is captivating to me. It is poetry. It is beautiful and impossible and a brave way to live.

Michael is kneeling in the snow. Often opening his arms to the sky, "Hail Mary full of grace...."

The church is closed...

Michael asked me to join him.

I told him I couldn't. I told him I'm not Catholic. I didn't describe my bad knees. I left. A little while later I went back and knelt beside him. Joined with him. I watched the snow fall. I listen to Michael pray. I wanted to honor his invitation. To care more about the sanctity we share than the differences we define.

Yesterday, in Midtown Manhattan, I realized too clearly what's wrong in America right now, and what could be more right....

This is the HUGE Midtown storefront from Diesel...

There was more, another or other windows, more corporate "Be Stupid" encouragements.

In my C-SPAN Book TV After Words interview, John Hope Bryant quoted his mentor, Quincy Jones, saying that America has spent the past couple decades "dumbing down", making "stupid" cool... So here it is. Gosh, is global warming understandable with "be stupid", or getting past racism and class discrimination?, is job creation achieved with "be stupid" ? I'm just not sure.

So John Hope Bryant said we need to spend the next decades making "smart" the next cool. Dr. King would agree, I think. I do. My heroes now are people like Bill Strickland, Dr. Harvest Collier, at Missouri S&T Jeff Rickey at Earlham, Jim Donathan at Elon, Sidney Bridges at Brooklyn Friends School, because they aren't allowing things to dumb down. Something about Quakers, too. Quaker places.

We can't dumb down. It's a crisis.

And this.... !

The Peninsula Hotel. A grand fancy expensive luxury delux hotel. Fifth Avenue. I locked my bike up on the scaffolding in front of the hotel and went in yesterday, to see if one of my sons was there. His part time job. The hotel keeps many workers on part time so they don't have to offer medical and other benefits. But that's a story for another time...

Yesterday, walking in, the doorman stopped me and asked if I was delivering something - I was wearing my bike helmet, my pant legs rolled up, my windbreaker....

"No," I answered.

"Are you delivering a message to a guest? The delivery entrance is around the block."

He was much younger than me, well dressed in his doorman uniform, African-American.

I assured him I wasn't delivering anything, just trying to say hello to my son.

On the way out, I went up and shook his hand. "It must be a hard job, for you, treating someone like a second class citizen," I said, smiling.

"It's just the rules," he said.

"I know. I don't mean you. But why do you think people here are afraid to see someone working? Why does someone working have to go hide in an invisible entrance?"

And I realized. We don't make much in this country anymore. We don't make automobiles competitively. We don't make garments. We don't make electronics. We don't make much furniture, or sheet rock, or steel.

You'd think, maybe, if we INSISTED people who WORK, dressed in their work clothes, HAD to walk through the front door of luxury hotels, were CELEBRATED, if we were NOT ashamed and embarrassed by anyone really WORKING, maybe we'd be a heck of a lot better off?

Maybe?

I'm simplifying things. I'm naive. Romantic.

"You biked here, sir, to deliver a message to someone? Come in, can I help you?"

Shame on us. For glorifying stupid, for insulting work. Just a day in New York.

A photo of me and Judy Bernstein at our Denver First-Year Experience table...

I've been lucky to meet extraordinary people - educators, writers, administrators - dedicating their lives to good things.

The depth of being here ---- honest conversations (that give me hope) about race, class, family, parenting, fathering & opportunity in America. Harvest, and his wife Shirley, I will write more. My eyes are continuously opened.

Judy & me at our table:

David Leslie helped me with my poster, than Valeria Patterson.

And:

And these guys from the Penfield business center here were so kind. Mike & Tom, and all the people there...

I stole...

I'm at the First-Year Experience Conference. Judy Bernstein and I begin our Trade Show booth today. We're vendors. Other authors parade at their "COME TO THE AUTHOR DINNER!" (Penguin) and tango at a "MEET OUR AUTHORS AT LUNCH!" (Random House) but Judy and I are here for the duration. We're here to meet and talk and truly be here. PublicAffairs has graced us each with two boxes of our books, which costs each of us nearly $150 just to get out of drayage. Yes, there's a business of "drayage."

The conference is in the Downtown Denver Sheraton Hotel. There's a Starbucks across the street. I thought I'd save the world, yesterday, or at least a tree, and walked into the store with my empty paper cup of Starbucks Coffee from the airport in North Carolina I'd stopped in the day before, passing the hour and a half en route from Newark, New Jersey to here, sort-of changing planes.

I'd kept the paper cup of coffee through the flight to Denver, through the shuttle trip to this hotel, through the night.

"Can you refill this?" I asked the lady behind the counter at Starbucks yesterday morning.

"Sure," she said. Smiling. "Is it from this morning?"

I didn't know what to answer. I was already nervous. I'd sworn off Starbucks for a few years, took a vow to support local coffee store owners. I'd kept my vow for far longer than the year I'd promised. Traveling, airport to airport, city to city, I fell back in. I was already "sinning," going to Starbucks - at least in the Church of Stop Shopping, but that's a longer story. I nodded my head to the lady behind the counter. Maybe I said "yes." Maybe I did go that far. Implied or explicit. I... wasn't fully honest, was I?

"Fifty-four cents for a refill, for today," the smiling lady said.

Fifty-four cents.

I stole. I paid fifty-four cents, and bought a pastry. I went back later in the day and got another refill. That one was intra-day.

This morning, the cup pictured above, I'm already a hardened fifty-four-cent'er. "A refill," I said to the lady.

"Fifty-four cents," she smiled. Another lady. The same smile.

I didn't buy a pastry.

I'm here for two more days. I want to know how long one paper cup can last!

This is a table top in Starbucks from yesterday, a group of people got up and left. I was amazed they didn't clear their table. That's just me. A sanctimonious thief.

This man, in an airplane into Denver, is reading....

I'm in the airplane, across the isle from him, in a middle seat in the 9th row. I'm between two guys, each a few years younger than me, each living within their headphones, with his arms crossed, asleep, or seemingly so, since we took off.

I'm going to the The First-Year Experience conference at the Downtown Denver Sheraton Hotel. I'm sharing Booth 804 with Judy Bernstein, author of They Poured Fire on Us From the Sky: The Story of Three Lost Boys from Sudan.

I'll be in Denver tonight, will post this once I'm there or tomorrow morning.

I've been reading John D'Agata's About a Mountain while my row-mates listen to their music. About Yucca Mountain, in particular. I don't know much about US nuclear waste disposal plans. I don't know that much about Los Vegas. John D'Agata is head of nonfiction writing in the Writer's Workshop, the University of Iowa.

He can write.

My plane left Newark hours ago. We landed somewhere, the crew changed, most of the passengers changed. I think we were in Charllote, [spelling], North Carolina. Ripton is in North Carolina, but he wasn't where I was.

I was in transit, in an airport. In a terminal. The terminal was a long hallway with large bathrooms and fast restaurants, a bookstore that didn't sell my book, or Judy Bernstein's or Matthew Aaron Goodman's, or any John D'Agata or James Galvin. Yesterday I finished Galvin's The Meadow.

The long hallway of the airport where I passed an hour and a half between landing and taking off again did have electric outlets. There seemed to be a lot of us plugging our many pieces of technology into those electric sockets.

On the flight from New York, I sat in the middle seat between two women. One was a bit younger, a reading teacher to young children in public school in Asbury Park, New Jersey. That's where Bruce Springsteen is from. It's a poor place. Its public school children have an overall poor reading level. She said very poor. She was reading a novel from a "New York Times bestselling author." The other woman lives in Atlanta. She was in New York for a week long training session in electric lighting. Run by Phillips. The same Phillips that makes electric bulbs. That woman was reading Nora Roberts. She let me read a couple pages. I've not read Nora Roberts.

My point is, each woman was reading. Neither plugged into ear buds or headphones or any other technology. We talked. We talked a lot and they read.

The men I'm between now, we're not talking. I don't know where they're going--other than we're landing in Denver--or why they're headed there. I don't know where they live, where their parents live now or used to before. These men put on their headphones as soon as we took off. They turned on their music. One watched a movie on his computer. One is using ear buds. The other has large Bose headphones.

I do want to know those things about them. Those sorts of things, anyways. That make conversation.

TODAY, Saturday, is HUG Eric Jesus Grimm DAY at Everyman Espresso. At 136 East 13th Street. Today is his last working day at my favorite coffee place.

This is Eric...

You can see he's holding up a signed copy of What Else But Home!

You can see the Everyman Espresso sign in back of him. He'd gone to Strand and bought a copy of my book. Very sweet.

This is a closeup of my signature to Eric...

OH MY !! ?? ERIC = SAM ?? ?? What happened? Did I write "SAM" in error? No no, look at the turquoise ink, that's to Eric Jesus Grimm. Who could "SAM" be? Am I two-timing books? Am I... ??

After Eric bought my book at Strand, he opened it up and saw my dedication to Sam.

This is Sam !!

This is Sam's VERY OWN Wikipedia page... CLICK HERE !! Sam Sifton, the CULTURE EDITOR at The New York Times since 2005 ! Wow.

Where is Sherlock Holmes? Where is Doctor Watson? Where is Robert Downey Jr. Where is Jude Law? I'd signed a book to Sam Sifton?

The EVIDENCE fell into our laps! This is IT !

"Dear Sam," the letter began. Something like, 'I'm sending you this book, by my friend Michael Rosen, because...' Something about an 'American classic.' Something about 'ending racism and discrimination.' Something about Sam probably liking the book because he came from the Downtown world, he understood poverty and its deprivations, overcoming racism. Signed, "Clayton."

Clayton?

Clayton Patterson. One of the biggest-hearted people I know. An artist, a photographer, videographer, the subject of the film Captured, editor of the books Resistance, Captured and more.

Clayton recommended he send a copy of What Else But Home to Sam Sifton, whom he respects. Sam would understand the story, Clayton insisted. It's best not to disagree with Clayton.

Clayton drafted a letter to Sam. I edited it a bit, emailed it to Clayton for his approval. Clayton approved. I signed a copy of What Else But Home to Sam. I printed out the letter & biked to Clayton, who signed it. I went to the Post Office, addressed an envelope, I think Priority Mail, stood at the machine, paid and mailed my signed book and Clayton's loving letter to Sam Sifton, Culture Editor, New York Times.

The letter was dated late December, days before Christmas.

I made sure to put the return address: Clayton Patterson, c/o Michael Rosen...

Sam sold my book to Strand. He left Clayton's letter tucked inside. He probably got $6 or so. (I spent about $19 - a bad trade for me?) MORE to the point, Clayton & I spent TIME, and more than that, we spent HOPE, TRUST & OPTIMISM.

So then I thought of my old professors, Brian Spooner, Igor Kopytoff, Arjun Appadurai - The Social Life of Things. Objects. Clayton & I took a What Else But Home and transformed it from a secular to precious object, Sam Sifton SNAPPED it back to bucks, $6 to be more or less precise, and Eric Jesus Grimm helped me sway it back to more, for him & me.

& it all ended with my asking for a cortado, made by Eric....

Isn't that a work of beauty? See, we're back to "beauty."

"...and in the end, the love you take, is equal to the love you make" (sort of)

So Sam Sifton, thank you !! ~ for letting Eric, Clayton and I share this experience. Here's to Culture !

Come back Eric Jesus Grimm ! Come back Sam Sifton ! Clayton, don't you dare go anywhere ! Love, Michael

An important decision. I'm renting an Exhibitor's Booth @ the First-Year Experience ! 29th Annual Conference, Denver, Feb 12 - 16. Sheraton Denver Downtown Hotel Booth 308 ! , with Judy Bernstein, author/co-author of They Poured Fire On Us From the Sky, also published by PublicAffairs. We believe in our books, know they will be excellent in college First-Year Experience. Other presses are taking their writers to the conference, but PublicAffairs can't afford that. They are kind enough to send us each two boxes of our books. If we sell them we keep the money. If we give them away, then we give them away. They're doing what they can. PublicAffairs is part of Perseus, Perseus is in Booth 316, just a couple tables over. They'll have catalogues with our books in them. We'll have our books! It's a match made in heaven. So Judy & I decided, "Let's go to Denver. Let's meet the people who make the decisions to assign books to incoming college Freshmen." So come visit us!

I've signed a contract with HeLT Consulting, in Chicago, run by Heidi Toboni, who was recommended by Kelly Hughes. Heidi consults and books authors as speakers. I'm excited to work with her, developing this aspect of the What Else But Home story, excited to speak more about parenting, fathering, the sacred and social issues that I've been lucky to speak with people about during my book tour.

My friend Michael Cecconi took this photo in the bookstore in the San Francisco airport...

I know it's self congratulatory, but it's awfully nice to see. Okay, so they're making Lego sculptures of Dan Brown books, but hey, still...

In this near year, I didn't thank Sandee Brawarski and the good people she worked with, Matthew Aaron Goodman (Hold Love Strong).

I've not yet been to the CherryVale Mall, in Rockford, Illinois. I've never had a reading in a big box book store. Only the Indies have had me. But there's a woman in a bookstore there named Gee Gee, who has hand sold copies of What Else But Home one after the other with love and care...

Gee Gee somehow found my book, drove 65 miles to my reading at the Wisconsin Book Fair, in Madison ~ and I'm far more than happy we met.

This is Gee Gee's pug,Hoover, in Boston...

For the nearly seven years while I was sitting in cafes putting words to paper, editing and re-writing, eventually working with Clive Priddle and later with Laura Stine at PublicAffairs, I wasn't a writer. I was a man with a bike and laptop and backpack.

Once a book is out and you start to book fairs & bookstores, radio and television, Internet videos, then you're "a writer," you're an "author." I've been blessed along this way by meeting the most wonderful people.

This is my bookstore owner hero, Carla Cohen of Politics & Prose (with Philippe, Juan and William, & I've published this before)...

My prayers are with Carla and her husband David. With her son Aaron Cohen who is making a film about lots of Aaron Cohen's. Our world needs Carla and lots more of Carla.

She introduced me to A Happy Marriage, and then to sitting with Rafael Yglesias. Which is a gift.

As are James Galvin, Daniel Asa Rose, Helen Thorpe, Judy Bernstein, Rachel DeWoskin, Mark Naison - writers, poets & scholars far more experienced than I, & generous. Collegial in its thick sense also of compassion.

Dan & Kit Mosheim, a lady who lives in VT now but originally from Austin, Texas and I can't find her name (if you see this, please email again and tell me), Karen Vinacour & Andrea Masley, Sheri Best, Leslie & Chris Hann, Jane Crotty, Nydia Velazquez, Diane McWhorter, Perry Pidgeon Hooks & her mom Missie, Yogi-Baby & Stu, Becky Fiske for assigning my book in her Bard @ Simon's Rock college course in Biography, Bill & Mary Bender, Leslie & Ripton (who refuses to read my book but loves Dan Brown) & Morgan (who liked it) & William (who says I tell a good story) & Kindu & Phil & Carlos, for Whitney who is off to India, Clive Priddle whom I count on, Lisa Kaufman whom I have hope in, Mark Chimsky whom I want to flourish far further from trauma, Carolyn & Miri & the JBC people, Heidi Budaj, Heidi Toboni, Julie Gales & her mom, Bernie and Barb Banet, Lolita Jackson & John Predergast, Harish Rao & Evelyn Frison, Leah Paulos, my mom Shirley & my dad Howard, David Leslie & Clayton Patterson, Robert Krulwich, Kelly Hughes, Garry Bregman, Kathryn and Harry Amyotte, Hugh and Florence Short, Marie Short, Ria Gruss, David & Sue Schwartz, John & Lorna Howard, Frances Goldin who is a Lady, Rosie Mendez, Michael Fuquay, Margarita Lopez, Noah David Smith, Daniel Bell, Adam Kluger & Mark Goodman, R. Roly Matalon, R Simon Jacobson, Matthew Pace, Mary Spink - I know I'm missing people ~ tell me & I'll post (don't be shy!).

And Ali - Worducopia - thank you for THIS REVIEW !

The moon is particularly beautiful tonight, & the world is hardly complete without the beauty of flowers...