My Day in Clarksburg....

... was a huge treat.  The Clarksburg Harrison Library had done a thorough publicity job with notices in the papers, cards stuck in borrowed books, announcements online and more, and I was delighted with almost 30 people for my open workshop, and then a smaller but highly receptive group of old friends and new who came for the reading and refreshments  (Thank you friends of the library!)
    And by the way, this was all on a WVU game day-- and Mountaineer football games are always a statewide event (WVU won 35 to 6, for the record.)
    I was introduced by Library Manager Julia Todd who pulled it all together, and before I started the workshop, the mayor of Clarksburg, Catherine Goings (see right) came up and gave me a certificate from the city of Clarksburg!  And then I got one from the governor of West Virginia.  Pretty neat.
     The workshop was lots of fun with a wonderful variety of people--professors and high school age students and seniors, published writers and beginners, everyone eager to write, most willing to share, their thoughts if not their writing.
     Dear Anna Smucker (see me and her at left) came to the reading, and Steve and Beth Goff.  He's the former WV Writers president. And for the whole day, instigator and informal publicist, money collector for my sales  (she brought cash for change) and doyenne of West Virginia literature, the inimitable Phyllis Moore was there.  Her license is "BKWORM," and she knows everything about writers and books in West Virginia.
     When the library event was over, and the library closed, Phyllis drove me on her new Literary Tour of Clarksburg.  Phyllis with her husband Jim for technical support gives frequent power point lectures to schools and senior centers etc. on various aspects of West Virginia literature:  immigrant writers, African-American writers, Civil War writers, and much more.  She's a published poet and essayist and really such a good friend to me and other writers.  After the tour, we visited her home, aka private library, where I met the famous cat Pearl S. Buck, and then, to top off a wonderful day, she took me to Minards Spaghetti Inn  for dinner.
      This is the first Italian restaurant I ever went to--it was a big deal for my family to go out at all and to go to Minard's for spaghetti and meatballs (and salad and Italian bread!) was the height of culinary delight.  It's still a fine restaurant, recommended to all of you when you go to Clarksburg, West Virginia, where I was born, and where today I felt like I was truly coming home.