Walk straight into yes with your Bingo dauber and your seat warmer

What a week! A lifetime in just five days!

In Madison, from boas to singing Shabbot to crying while reading "Say Hi to Yaron" in A Room of One’s Own Bookstore to vultures carrying caribou across the center line on Highway 94.

And in Minneapolis (or Teeny-Tiny-Apolis, as Mr Brilliant and I are wont to call it for no good reason), from Bingo-a-go-go to Pilgrims to Big Cherries on a Huge Spoon to Amazon Bookstore to Wacky Interculturalists to Garden Parties to diversity training in a school and beyond.

So goes the book tour. Madison and Minneapolis. I’m still recovering.

It all started with an innocent conversation over breakfast at Bertie Lou’s in Portland, Oregon, this past July. Here, I’ll reenact it:

Nancy: So, I think you should come to Minneapolis in October.

Me: Sure, you betcha!

Then Jodi Moo Moo Head Cohen got into the act. "If you come to Madison first, I’ll drive you to Minneapolis the next day!" Not only that, but she gave me a bed to sleep in, fed me Thai spicy tofu and quinoa salad, took me to a remarkable afternoon of singing Shabbot in a senior community–an hour of recognizing at a very core level our impulse toward ritual–a reading in a wonderful store called A Room of One’s Own that you must visit when you go to Madison, the surprise of meeting Laura Flynn Endres ("I’m your Day One!" she said), a reunion at the reading (after 25 years) with a friend from graduate school who lives in Madison, and then a five-hour road trip complete with a GINORMOUS VULTURE SWOOPING INTO THE ROAD JUST IN FRONT OF OUR CAR TO LITERALLY DRAG THE CARCASS OF SOME ENORMOUS ANIMAL (A MOOSE? A BUFFALO? AN ENTIRE LITTLE LEAGUE TEAM?) ACROSS THE HIGHWAY. NO KIDDING.

I wanted to move to Madison immediately. Not just because of the vulture. I wonder how Mr Brilliant will take the news.

As soon as Jodi dropped me off at Nancy O’Brien’s house in Minneapolis, we left for an amazing adventure at the downtown Hyatt. Six hundred of my closest friends had gathered to play Bingo for charity, hosted by Miss Richfield 1981 who has the largest mouth I’ve ever seen and made me laugh all night long. I had no idea that people bring their own dauber with which to mark their Bingo cards. In fact, until that very moment I never knew such a thing as a Bingo dauber existed in the universe. There is so much I do not know. Evidently I am a mere babe in the woods.

A late night of talking and playing "A What?!" around a fire pit surrounded by people who were evidently far younger and more resilient and more used to the weather than I (all I can say is thank goodness for a car with seat warmers and it’s not even November yet), and then up a few hours later for early morning church. I spoke for an hour at Pilgrim Lutheran Church, hosted by Pastor Carol who is a remarkable woman, with an invitational voice and spirit such as I’ve never seen. It was a privilege to be there with her. If you find yourself in St. Paul, Minnesota, and are wont to attend church, I urge you to seek her out.

Is there any greater joy than a post-Church gathering in the church basement for lunch? I think not. And imagine my surprise when a woman approached me there, saying that her cousin had created a piece of art for the book!

"Who’s your cousin?" I asked.

"Tari June Goerlitz," she answered. Knock me down. Tari lives in Germany and had sent several pieces of art, including a beautiful little 3-D beaded shrine. "Hold on," I told the woman, reaching into the small box I had brought with me.

As fate would have it, I had brought with me exactly one piece of art from the book to share with people at the readings. Yep. It was the little shrine made by Tari in Germany and now face-to-face with her cousin in a church basement in St Paul, Minnesota. Imagine that.

After the best soup I’ve ever eaten in any church basement, a whirlwind tour of Minneapolis to show off the fair city in a group of friends. The photo of us at Minnehaha Falls tells it all–this is a global world. In the photo, Peter from Slovakia, Yuki from Japan, Basma from Egypt, Riikka from Finland, me from the U.S., and Elina from Cuba. Such a rich, amazing group of people who enlarge my vision of the world and make me laugh, laugh and think, think.

A reading at the nation’s oldest feminist bookstore–Amazon Bookstore in Minneapolis–was punctuated by meeting such wonderful people, including Jill who asked me to read "Squeeze in Next to Someone, Arm to Arm" and Elizabeth M. who took LIAV on her honeymoon in September and walked with her new husband to the end of a long dock each day during their honeymoon to read an essay (Elizabeth – I didn’t get a chance to say goodbye–would you email me?). Elizabeth asked me to read "Burn Those Jeans," and I happily obliged. Then Basma and Jon deVries hosted a party after the reading at their 105 year old house with amazing food and laughter and a meeting of many cultures. My thanks for the perfect ending to that day.

A gorgeous garden party the next night was hosted by Kellee Magee, the wonderful. Incredible women–The New Girls’ Network–gathering to create a strong network of women in the world, learning more about each other in the process, sharing thoughts about their work and their lives. We sat on Kellee’s new back patio and later, after most had left, we inaugurated her new stone fireplace and ate popcorn by firelight until late, late.

Add a fascinating beautiful neighbor woman who introduced herself by meowing, along with conversations about PhD dissertations and an evening of doing diversity training at a local school the next night, and I was wiped out for good.

My thanks to Jodi, Nancy, Kellee, Basma, and Jon for their incredible hospitality–and to the booksellers at A Room of One’s Own and Amazon Bookstore. The proof of the goodness of that week is that the photos of me at the beginning look far different from the photos of me at the end. Tired, but happy, my friends. Tired, but happy.

With love to all of you–and to all who came out to the readings, those whose names I know like Laura and Paul and Daina and Kyoung-Ah and Maryalice and Rita and those I don’t know, like the woman who cried quietly throughout the reading in Madison and the extraordinary light of a woman in Minneapolis. You have no idea what your presence means to me.

[Next stop on the LIAV Tourapalooza is GREENSBORO, NORTH CAROLINA, this Friday night, October 17th, at 7pm]