I had the good fortune to be invited for dinner with Amy Tan at USFS after her March 18th speech at 5:30 on the UAFS campus.  I represented the Fort Smith Public Library because I am a board member, and everyone knew I'd get a kick out of going.  And they were right.  Amy Tan is very small, has gray hair cut about chin level with bangs, and was dressed in varying shades of purple.  She speaks in a courteous and delicate tone.

I'm certain she has made a lot of money from her writing and her books made into movies.  She said she didn't like the business of movie making.  She much prefers writing.  She's currently working on a novel titled, Memory of Desire, which I think is a great title. 

Her most interesting story of the night was telling us about swimming with whale sharks.  They're huge, she told us, and they have a little eye on the side of the head.  The skin is very rough, and once her hand grazed the side of a whale shark, and when she climbed out of the water onto a boat, she saw blood on her knuckles.  It was as if her hand had scraped across sandpaper.

Hard to imagine such a delicate woman swimming with whale sharks.

A Gathering of New Friends

Life since retirement as branch manager of Miller Branch Library of Fort Smith Public Library has been occupied by writing my true crime novel, Blind Rage.  It seems that if I wasn't talking about it, I was thinking about it.  My long-time friends, no doubt, grew tired of hearing about each new bit of information I gleaned from a visit with one of my many contacts who ultimately became my new friends.

New friends, Rusty and Linda Myers, provided me with a special insight to the Park family.  Rusty was a childhood friend of Sam Hugh's, and his wife, Linda, remembered the kindnesses offered her by Sam Hugh when she and Rusty were dating and then married.  It was with great sadness that they witnessed Sam Hugh's decline.  I'm forever grateful to them for sharing hours of conversation with me.  We sat around their kitchen table during bad weather, which gave me the opportunity to view their comfortable home and lovely art work.  Their taste matched mine, and we had a lot of fun talking about each piece.  And on warm days, I was treated to the view of their back yard where baskets of petunias and geraniums hung from metal hangers fashioned by a local artist, who also designed some of their garden art.  Ferns stood elegantly in shady corners along with hostas and impatiens. Often I arrived a little early to find Linda on her hands and knees weeding, her face covered in a new crop of freckles that made her tanned face even cuter.