Bloomington or Bust!
Indiana Edition
After those super Kalamazoo book release events at Michigan News Agency and Bookbug/This is a Bookstore, I slept a few hours and then hit the road, went south. Indiana is a big old state, I’m just going to say it. And a lot of it’s flat. It’s got some real prettiness to it close to Lake Michigan and then there’s the flat for a long while. And then finally, four and a half hours later, it gets pretty again, with hills, rivers, forests, and limestone outcroppings, and then you’re in Bloomington. And if you’re lucky, you’ll find yourself at Morgenstern Books.
Harrison “Harry” Sutton, who works at the bookstore, interviewed me about The Waters, and we had a lot of fun and we all laughed a lot (including the audience and bookstore owner Jenna, who made me feel most welcome). I met several other Suttons, and they were all fabulous and doing good work of all kinds. W.W. Norton put me up at the most fun hotel, the Graduate Inn, just the place for a smarty-pants like me. Some of the decor includes card catalogues and a big set of old bleachers.
Here's the Graduate Inn website
And best of all I got to see Jenny Hawke (pictured here, outside Morgenstern’s bookstore). We met a Pacific University in Oregon, when I was an instructor and she was a student. She is a medical professional, and she told me that the edema swelling my legs could be from heart issues caused from breast radiation from cancer treatment and also the drugs I took for five years—she says she’s read some new research suggesting this happens sometimes. Probably not, but she said I should get an echocardiogram. (Sorry for getting all serious, but you have to keep investigating these things).
Okay, I have a lot more to say, such as about stopping in South Bend to see my brother Marshall at work, where he was standing in a cold parking lot teaching people how to drive semi-trucks. Here he is, the tall guy, with some of the students and fellow employees.
As always, I have more to say, but let’s wrap it up. Good night America!
So enjoy hearing of your travels. Did you take tamoxifen? I did. Not good side effects for sure. Curious about the bungee cord!
Oh, Indiana…so much of my home state is so very flat, with so many open fields. I rarely traveled south enough to see the trees and hills, but when I did thought both, “This is Indiana?” and, “This is so beautiful!” Bloomington is beautiful indeed!
“It is flat for the people who drive through, but those who live here begin to sense a slight unevenness,” Michael Martone writes in “The Flatness.” Even as a kid, it has always been the unevenness in the flattest of spaces that fascinates me to look closer.
Love your reports from the road! Safe travels to your next destination!