This girl’s force is about to go to sleep but I thought I’d give you all an impression from the first day before I turn out the lights and pull open the hotel curtains so I can see that fabulous skyline of Boston that stretches across the full length of my window.
Here we are in the land of Harvard, MIT, the Charles River, Fenway, Top of the Hub and the Boston Tea Party. You feel the whispers of the past as you walk and drive this city. History lives in the mortar around here.
This whirlwind day has offered hints of our roots and handed me an opportunity to ascend a very steep learning curve in the land of Uber. I needed Uber to get around today and Uber and I were just getting to know each other.
To get Uber moving for me required the help and savvy of two lovely employees at the registration desk at the Westin Boston Waterfront. They didn’t blink an eye. They just took my smartphone and went to work and conjured up Daniel in a Toyota Camry.
(Oh, and the awesome guy at the ALA registration who told me how to get my free ride by putting in the promo code Feeling22…. Worked like a charm.)
So Daniel and I zipped across town to Cambridge so I could meet with Maryanne Wolf, author of Proust and the Squid. We got a cup of tea together and talked about our shared passion for giving children the best chance at life we can imagine by opening them up to books.
She is one of the brightest lights I’ve run into in my life and it was an honor and a privilege to spend time with her.
We talked about the challenge we all face in managing screen time and young children. Even this neuroscientist says the research we have to guide us is piecemeal. We have no longitudinal studies at this point.
Next a lovely employee at Sofra Cafe and Bakery helped me figure out how to get past the block on my phone’s screen…turns out you have to rate the driver of the previous Uber ride and then you can get conjure up the next one. I stood inside the Cafe watching out the window for Paul in a Honda Fit.
Paul and I zipped back across town and I listened to Paul describe his career “Portfolio.” Seems that now instead of working one job…you work a portfolio of jobs. Paul teaches ESL to au pairs and scientists and is also working on the Emergency Services plan and policies for Washington, D.C. His GPS delivered me to the loading dock of the Westin but I assured him I could get back to my hotel via the Convention Center. You gotta laugh…this technology has almost, almost I say… got it right.
Back at the hotel I changed into something slightly sparkly and graduated to being able to call my own Uber…yayyyy….and Mark came to the rescue in an Infinity and careened across the city to the Candlewick Publishing event at a suite at Fenway Park. Talk about history and whispers. Talk about authors…Matt Tavares, M.T. Anderson, Timothy Basil Ering, David Elliott to name a few…and looking at the Golden Glove Awards won by various Red Sox greats. There was the big green monster and there was Peter H. Reynolds. Hallowed halls indeed.
By now I can get an Uber ride with one hand tied behind my back. Totally starting to get into this thing. Hey, no money changes hands, right? You just click on the little Uber icon and tell ’em where you want to go and they send someone in 4 minutes and off you go.
My fellow adventurer, a wonderful Texas librarian named Cynthia Alvarez, and I headed off into the night with Nasr in a Honda Civic. Nasr I am sorry to tell you seemed to circle the block a time or two. Let’s just say we kept passing the famous Citgo sign and I think maybe we should only have had that little treat one time.
Cynthia and I peered out the window as we got deep into downtown because Nasr’s GPS was getting a bit fitful. Finally we convinced him that we could see the Prudential Building so we got him to stop the car and let us out. Then Cynthia and I had to figure out how to get up to the Top of the Hub. Then we had to show our ID to get up to the Top of the Hub.
The elevator ride to the Top of the Hub delivered us to the Simon and Schuster Dessert event where we found old friends and were treated to Cassandra Clare surrounded by a group of students who could not believe their good luck. There was cotton candy, fruit…(no one was eating the fruit)..some kind of blue martini looking beverage in fabulous long-stemmed glasses… fancy pastries and then….. at the far end of the room was the lovely lady making crepes. I kid you not. She cooked up the crepe and you added your raspberries, blueberries, vanilla sauce, raspberry sauce, chocolate sauce, whipped cream…yep ….it was the most fabulous way to end the evening.
There we were looking out over the city of Boston with all of its twinkling lights and its Revolutionary ghosts and an army of Uber drivers.
Cynthia and I headed back to the hotel via Uber and Miguel and his small car to be named later. Miguel had been in the IT business and had lost his job. His dream now is to move to Florida and invest in a business with his wife. He has two small children…one is 2 1/2 and one is 4 months. He also has a daughter who is 22. We asked him if his daughter is in college and he said she tried it but after one semester she didn’t know what she wanted to do so she left.
Yep, typical day in the life of a librarian. I think we pretty much have the same job as these Uber guys. We meet all kinds of people and we help them get where they want to go. It’s that part about the credit card that we need to iron out. Can you imagine if every time we walked a library customer through their “trip” our phone was ringing up their credit card? I don’t know…this is starting to sound pretty good to me… I wonder what the Sons of Liberty would say?