Dispatches From Baton Rouge and Tipitina's

The Louisiana Book Fair in Baton Rouge reading went better than Vaquero expected:

-- His was the last one scheduled for the day;
-- It was late;
-- There were so many authors reading that many of the readings were barely attended.;
-- He'd brought a guitar, which he'd had to carry with him all day; he felt like an idiot, because he knew there'd be no reason to play it.

However he had an enthusiastic audience present, with a central cadre of African American women, who really like both his New Orleans books. Some of them, were now reading the Cuban music book. He read the parts he's settled on for readings, including the surreal night in Charity Hospital's emergency room at the start of our time in New Orleans (Charity Hospital no longer exists). The 25 people or so there laughed all the way through. He concluded with playing his "Between Piety and Desire," and that went over well too. Books were sold and signed. So it turned out to be perfectly lovely when he expected it to be otherwise (he's not feeling well either -- the cold wind down there, like the cold wind up here, has made us both fairly ill from the junk that it is blowing around).

Situations like this don't always turn out so positively, but you have to do this anyway. Whoever thinks touring to support your book is an easy gig has never done it.

He rode back to New Orleans with the head of Reference for the State Library, so that was an interesting ride.

Later he hooked up with friends and went to Tipitina's, where there were other friends. Heard the Brasilian group, Os Mutantes, who were included in an AfroPop program that he did back in the day on Brasil Tropicalia Movement, with amigo CD, who was chair of the Spanish-Portuguese Dept.

CD's currently stepped down as chairperson for a sabbatical he's spending doing research in Brasil. CD is among the Tulane friends written about in The Year Before the Flood. It turns out a Times-Picayune writer was at Tipitina's too, who is writing an article about the Tropicalia movement. She'd read TYBTF, so she got in touch with CD down in Rio, to ask him some questions. TYBTF has put a lot of people in touch with each other, who otherwise might not have been. That is so cool!

So my baby's coming home later today, yay! He's got so much to do though, it probably will feel almost as though he's not here -- and then he's off again, for California.