Traveling With The Isaacs, and My 7th Favorite Book . . .

So right now I'm sitting in the bowels of a stadium, somewhere in Biloxi, Mississippi. Smells like it too. The Isaacs first show this week is a Gaither show here in town, but right now the stage is being assembled, seats are being put in place, and everyone is preparing for the show.

I am on the internet in the rather stinky dressing room, getting ready to go grab some lunch in the catering area.

Traveling on a bus was something new, but since I love sleeping in very dark places with some background noise (tires humming over asphalt), I slept great. Poor Maile . . . turns out the kids were up at all hours . . . I'll have some making up to do when I get home.

Tomorrow Tallahasee, the next day Tampa, and then flying home from there as long as this big storm doesn't drop two feet of snow on a BWI runway.

So, now is as good a time as any to tell you that my 7th favorite book is a novel by Wallace Stegner, one of the great American-west writers of all time. The book is called Crossing To Safety and tells the story of a young couple, just starting out. He is a professor, she is an expectant mother, and they move to the midwest, on their own, knowing no one.

It is a wonderful tale of friendship and of growing older. Stegner does a fascinating job exposing the issues that lie just under the surface between friends and spouses and relatives. His sometimes melancholy, sometimes humorous, and always insightful reflections on the "ordinary" lives of these characters is an enthralling read.

Highly recommended.

So now I'm off to find some food, and maybe get a shower, and then work with Lily Isaacs on her book, trying to tell it in as interesting and touching a way as Stegner could do (probably won't come close, but might as well aim high).

Happy Thursday.