{"id":1366,"date":"2017-03-17T06:00:34","date_gmt":"2017-03-17T13:00:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/?p=1366"},"modified":"2017-03-17T04:47:36","modified_gmt":"2017-03-17T11:47:36","slug":"tucson-festival-of-books-afterword","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/2017\/03\/17\/tucson-festival-of-books-afterword\/","title":{"rendered":"Tucson Festival of Books Afterword"},"content":{"rendered":"
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John and Marsha at the Tucson Festival of Books<\/p><\/div>\n

The Tucson Festival of Books has two distinct purposes. \u00a0Number one is to promote literacy and number two is to support a love of books and reading. \u00a0At my Sunday panel, the Mysterious West, both of those purposes came together in an amazing way.<\/span><\/p>\n

The three authors had been asked to come to the panel armed with a book to give away to the winner of what was called a truth or lie contest. \u00a0The authors were supposed to provide three little known facts about themselves\u2014two of them were supposed to be the truth and one a lie. \u00a0I forgot to bring the book along. \u00a0(Saturday it was ninety degrees out; I wore regular flats instead of my trusty Sketchers; my back and feet were killing me. \u00a0What do you expect? \u00a0Of course I forgot the book!)<\/span><\/p>\n

Nonetheless, I did have my little known facts all lined up and ready to be dropped into the conversation, except I soon realized none of them would work. \u00a0For me, TFOB is like old home week. \u00a0I quickly realized there were far too many people in that room who knew where all my bodies were buried and would know instantly exactly which of my \u201ctrue\u201d facts weren’t. \u00a0I was going to say I was once tied to a tree and left with a clothes pin on my nose. That one may have sounded like a lie, but it wasn\u2019t. Dan Smith, someone from my old neighborhood, was in the audience. \u00a0As the younger brother of one of the ban of miscreants involved, he knew it was the gospel. \u00a0I had considered claiming I was an only child, but Dan could have called me out on that one, too. \u00a0I had considered saying my first paying job was working at the local newspaper, but some of the kids I BABYSAT when I was in high school (both of them now retired) were there, too, and they could have nailed me on that one. \u00a0Two of the kids who were in high school when I was a librarian on the reservation were in the audience as well as someone who knew me as a teacher at Pueblo High School in 1966! \u00a0The audience also included one of my life insurance clients from the mid-seventies, Susan Iazetta. \u00a0Old home week indeed!<\/span><\/p>\n

The other authors did as requested and gave their books to their personal truth or lie winner. \u00a0I had a better trick up my sleeve.<\/span><\/p>\n

You may have noticed that there\u2019s a photo at the top of the blog\u2014John Hudson is on the left, I\u2019m in the middle, and Marcia Robinson is on the left. Is red a great color or what?<\/span><\/p>\n

Regular readers of this blog have heard about Marcia before. \u00a0She grew up struggling with a combination of dyslexia and English as a second language, a combination that made reading impossible. \u00a0At age 58 she was illiterate and stuck in a dead end job as a jail guard where she was unable to apply for any supervisory positions due to her inability to read and write reports. \u00a0That was when she finally knocked on the door of Literacy Connects and asked for help. Literacy Connects happens to be one of the primary beneficiaries of funds donated back to the community by the Tucson Festival of Books.<\/span><\/p>\n

Marcia\u2019s Literacy Connects reading tutor, Trish, introduced Marcia to my Joanna Brady books, and that\u2019s how Marcia learned to read\u2014using my Joanna books as her textbooks. Because she was drawn into the stories, she found reading was something the wanted to learn to do and has now mastered. \u00a0In the years since, Marcia and I have become friends. \u00a0(By the way, she\u2019s caught up on Joanna now and is working her way through the Beaumonts\u2014\u201creading every single word,\u201d as she likes to say.) She also has a new brand new and very responsible job that takes her all over the state of Arizona.) \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

On the way into the Mysterious West venue on Sunday afternoon, I stopped off to chat with some of the people waiting in line, including Marcia and her new partner, Melinda. \u00a0They were in the \u201cnon ticketed\u201d line and I was afraid they wouldn\u2019t make it inside, so we visited for a time outside. Once the doors opened, I went into the auditorium and continued chatting with some of the folks in the front few rows. \u00a0That was when a Ginny White, a fan and a Festival visitor from Los Alamos, came up to me and said, \u201cI just spent an hour standing in line with a man who, at age 61, has just read his first book ever\u2014Judgment Call.\u201d She pointed him out to me as the guy in the red shirt who\u2019s sitting in the back row. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

How could I NOT go talk to him? \u00a0And since Marcia was a few rows in front of him, how could I NOT take her with me? And there we are together.<\/span><\/p>\n

The above photo was taken with John\u2019s wife\u2019s iPhone. When Kris sent it along, she told me John\u2019s story. \u00a0He was someone who struggled with reading both in school and out. \u00a0After the death of his father when John was 16, he moved out of the house and supported himself by driving a school bus. \u00a0He graduated from high school and joined the Air Force. Finally, he managed to land his dream job\u2014that of being first a mail carrier and eventually a postmaster in several small towns in southern Arizona. \u00a0In all that time, although he read work-related books, he never once read a single book for pleasure. <\/span><\/p>\n

Last year, in advance of a family trip back home to Mississippi, Kris gave him a copy of Judgment Call, one of the more recent Joanna books. \u00a0Suddenly, in reading a story about all those familiar Cochise county places, John found himself HOOKED for the first time ever!!! \u00a0He went back to the store and bought the entire series. He\u2019s working his way through the Joanna books the same way Marcia did, one book at a time. \u00a0I arbitrarily declared him the winner of my part of the truth or lie contest and gave him an autographed copy of Downfall to go with the rest of the series.<\/span><\/p>\n

So there you have it, John and Marcia\u2014one who could read but wouldn\u2019t and one who couldn\u2019t read and now can. As for me? I had the distinct honor of bringing the two of them together. \u00a0For me it was the high point of the entire weekend. <\/span><\/p>\n

As far as I\u2019m concerned, what that means is this: \u00a0The Tucson Festival of Books wins again!<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Tucson Festival of Books has two distinct purposes. \u00a0Number one is to promote literacy and number two is to support a love of books and reading. \u00a0At my Sunday panel, the Mysterious West, both of those purposes came together in an amazing way. The three authors had been asked to come to the panel […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8,33,49,146,110],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1366","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-festivals","category-books","category-education","category-literacy","category-tucson"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3nsBA-m2","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1366","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1366"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1366\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1368,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1366\/revisions\/1368"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1366"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1366"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1366"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}