'Hamming it up

Last night, we read in the cozy basement of the palatial Village Books in Bellingham, WA. Susan, the events coordinator, coordinated our event. Because she is such a fan of coordination, she has also become the model coordinator of her local drawing group—she told the story of how, recently, when they didn’t have a professional model, she ended up posing (clothed) for the session, so she’s seen the easel from both sides now. Elizabeth Colen, whose carefully selected poems were entertaining and educational, was a smash success in drumming up an attentive audience, pictured here, including a few people who either had art modeled in the past, such as the bearded gentleman toward the front left, or were considering getting into it: Appropriately, since so much of Live Nude Girl deals with looking and being looked at, the reading room was hung with many, many pictures of fruits and vegetables with large, staring eyes: During the Q&A, one attendee asked me if I could do the pose that I’d read about, the one I held over the course of 14 weeks in a Boston University sculpture class taught by Isabel McIlvain:
Afterwards, Carol and Elizabeth and some of their friends took us to D’Anna’s for Italian food. On the way there, we saw the scenic downtowns, including the city’s many spectacular neon signs:
After dinner was eaten and much fun was had, we retired to the house, where I had the best sleep of the tour so far in the pink bedroom upstairs. Insomnia is often my worst enemy, especially on tour, but last night I slept magically. Maybe it was because of the fairy on the light switch on the wall, who Carol and Elizabeth tell me some people like to call the Radical Fairy on account of the strategic placement of the actual light switch:
You should know that Sylvie the cat is not the only photogenic creature around here. There is also Callie who is a natural poser with one brown eye and one blue one...
...and Rainier Maria, who is blind. Behind him is the colorful hutch where Atticus the cat-who-is-quite-fierce dwells: And she’s not really a pet per se, but Esther Healey is a champ at holding still for the camera: Elizabeth and Carol make delicious coffee, and they serve it in fired-on-glass mugs with words and pictures:
Have you hugged your camp director today? More importantly, will we see you when we read at Garfield Book Company in Tacoma this afternoon at 4:00? We hope so?