Nerd Festival Highlights

I went to the Arkansas Nerd Literary Festival today. Apparently, there was also an Earth Day festival today, so trying to find a place to park was a little bit loco. I still made it to the PostSecret presentation--albeit about 5 minutes late. I had to sit on the floor, but that was OK. It was really cool. Kevin asked me before I went if the presentation was going to make me cry. I laughed at him and told him no, but I have to admit that I did get a little misty from time to time. Some of the secrets were pretty heartbreaking. He had some postcards that he couldn't publish due to copyright issues (they were sent in on cards that had copywrited art), so he shared some of them in a slide show.

A one that stands out is one that a woman wrote about giving up a son for adoption 15 years earlier, figuring out where he lived, and taking her kids to his house to trick or treat and all of the emotions that brought.

Another one that struck me was from a woman who said that her now ex-husband convinced her to get an abortion so that he would marry her, but now she wishes she would have kept the baby and murdered him instead.

So some of them are pretty heavy. It's amazing to me the huge regrets that the average person carries around every day. If you don't have any, you probably just haven't lived long enough yet. We all make bad decisions eventually--some more grave than others.

Anyway, I bought a PostSecret book and had it signed and spoke to the guy who compiles the post cards (Frank Warren) for a second. He seemed like a really nice guy.

After that presentation, I had a few Bookcrossing books to release, so I walked around the River Market and did that. I'm not completely familar with the River Market. I mean, I know where The Flying Saucer, The Underground Pub, Willy D's, and Sticky Fingers are (don't I sound like an alcoholic?! Believe it or not, I've never had an alcoholoic beverage from any of those establishments!), but that's about it. So I just wandered. And I found the ArtSpace place which has lots of expensive art for sale (but it was fun to look, anyway), and a Non-profit fair trade shop which is kind of like Pier 1, but more socially conscious (I get the feeling that their wares weren't made by 3 year olds in sweat shops). They had lots of cool stuff, but nothing I couldn't live without.

One of the oddest things I encountered was a woman dressed in an old timey dress, holding a (fake) goose and stroking it lovingly. She also had on a very tall hat which was adorned with white feathers and the hat was threatening to fly off her head with every gust of wind. It took me an embarrassingly long amount of time to figure out that she was "Mother Goose". Duh! But there weren't any kids around at all. The children's area was behind the library, and she was hanging out by herself in front of the library. I laughed every time I saw her. I couldn't help it. She took it in stride. What was she going to do about it, beat me with her goose?