Fortunately, Unfortunately

OCTOBER—UPS AND DOWNS AND CRASHES

October began well. My friend Mary and I had a lovely week at the Elderhostel/Road Scholar event in Ashland--saw 4 plays: Midsummer Nights Dream, My Fair Lady, Taming of the Shrew, and Streetcar Named Desire. Loved two, didn’t much care for the others, but they were all done fantastically well.

Unfortunately, we both came back with colds.

Fortunately I was pretty much over it before I had good friends from the Hader Connection come to stay here while we spent 3 glorious days at Wordstock and the Northwest Publishers Association Convention--fun schmoozing.

Fortunately the Berta and Elmer Hader Lifetime in Art book was well-received at the convention, making a great lead-in for my biography--which Concordia University will publish next year provided the writing comes up to their standards!

Unfortunately as I was riding high and celebrating with my friends that evening, my computer turned black and beeped in a very irritated fashion until we managed to turn it off.

Fortunately the nice folk at Aloha Computer Tutor came right over the next day to check it out.

Unfortunately they discovered the motherboard was shorted out.

Fortunately my son Hal (my family’s computer guru) arrived from Providence and immediately got me a MiniMac that still uses my nice screen and keyboard.

Unfortunately the Apple Store said the broken MacAir had to go somewhere in the Midwest for repairs and they didn’t think they could find my data.

Fortunately I had discovered a year previously that the old backup wasn’t working and purchased a new one from Aloha. And it worked well. All the data on the Hader book is saved.

Unfortunately my calendar has lost all the data except the regular events programmed in it.

Good news is that means I have NO coming events to attend!

Bad news/ good news is that I am checking all my emails to see what I have promised to do and when. (They are, of course, a mess.)

So if I don’t show up or seem extremely confused, my good news is---

I FINALLY HAVE AN EXCUSE!

Hader Art Book Showing

Come to Multnomah County Library on Saturday, October 19th, from 2 PM to 3:30 PM for the first showing of the brand-new book on Hader art.

Berta and Elmer Hader, the Caldecott winning author/illustrators of THE BIG SNOW (1948), were originally San Francisco artists, trained in a variety of art techniques, long before they merged their talents into creating and illustrating nearly 100 children's books in the 1900s.

The non-profit foundation has just produced a fascinating book with many gorgeous reproductions of much of their work, including the illustrated personal letters sent to friends and editors, Berta’s ivory miniatures, Elmer’s “California Impressionist” paintings of New York country landscapes, the children’s pages that were part of McCall’s and the Saturday Evening Post magazines, etc/ etc. (All in one tidy book that fits easily on a library shelf).

The four compiler/authors will all be at the Library’s US Bank Room (just inside the front entrance) to talk, schmooze, sign books, and answer questions.

I’ll be there, since this is sort of a prelude to my Hader biography that will (hopefully) come out in late 2014.