Being typically not a traveler nor a seeker of crowds, come March, I will be obliged to break the shackles of my weather-imposed winter quarantine to spend almost four days in Charlottesville in the human swarm attending the Festival of the Book.
Once again more than 20 thousand are expected in town for the event. It makes me want to run for the hills. And coming on the heels of what promises to be a winter of uncommon isolation, to be thrust so suddenly among so many with so much time to fill, well, I hope the wild-eyed unkempt mountain man by then can tolerate the close social distance and speak in comprehensible utterances. I have my doubts about him.
The Festival web site is reaching final form, and you can peruse the schedule of speakers, as I intend to do over the weekend, and click-to-grab events to “your book bag” as you see in the screen clip above, and end up with times and places laid out for you so that you have the logistics of the five day event under control. (Note almost all events are free!)
Don’t neglect to find the line up of Master Naturalist speakers at Blue Ridge Mountain Sports on Saturday, March 20. I’ll be sharing the 4:00 slot with two other nature-writers whose works I intend to explore ahead of time. Then, that evening at 6 pm is the grand gathering, the author’s reception at the Paramount Theatre on the downtown mall–a final test of my abilities to balance cup and crumpet and carry on multiple conversations, spitting crackers and spilling red wine on my tan linen slacks.
In spades? Now, about the title of this blog post….
