Come Fly With Me–

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Jack’s Wednesday guest blog – –

There was a time when I enjoyed flying. During the 1980s and 1990s, I flew all over Europe and back and forward across the Atlantic.

Some of this was work-related, some was with my folk band, and some was just for leisure. Of course this was before 9/11, and airport security was much more relaxed.

I was late to check in for my flight from Boston to Scotland and was put on stand-by. I was also the last person left and got the last seat. It was first class – not business class – actual FIRST CLASS!! I had a personal dedicated flight attendant, unlimited drinks and excellent food, just like the other five folks who’d paid for it. And just one of the unexpected perks for an itinerant folksinger.

I was flying with the other members of my old band Heritage to Venice for a two week regional festival called FolkEst. The leg from London to Venice was with Alitalia, and the pilot had a tailwind. So he announced he’d give us a small detour over the Eiger and Jungfrau, explaining we shouldn’t move from side to side, as he would give everyone a view. That’s when we looked down and saw plainly the ledge on top of the Eiger, where we’d all been sitting just a few months earlier when playing on a Swiss tour. Our pilot got a sitting ovation as we touched down in Venice,

Alitalia also had the best food, which is something else that I began to pay attention to over the years. They were also one of the last airlines that still had smoking seats at the back of the plane!

I always enjoyed people watching, but when transferring at Heathrow in London to a Scottish flight, almost all the people on the other side of the walkway were folk I knew every time! Scotland is a small country!!

But do I still enjoy flying? No, NO, NO! Less legroom, pay extra for almost everything, nasty food – – –

The Monday Book – I Have Some Questions For You by Rebecca Makkai

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Guest review by Janelle Bailey, avid reader/ever-an-educator/lifelong learner…and also now 7th grade ELA teacher and part-time bookseller

I Have Some Questions For You by Rebecca Makkai

Rebecca Makkai is one of those authors who, though she’s only written a few books, prompts me to be eager to read anything and everything she writes. I had already very much “enjoyed” (as much as one can, a book about the AIDS crisis of the 1980s in Chicago) her The Great Believers before getting to hear her speak in a small and intimate setting at the Wisconsin Book Festival.

And hearing about her writing process and learning about all of her work and research that had gone into that book easily convinced me that she knows what she’s doing, that I can trust her writing, and will–as I have already said–read everything she writes.

I feel exactly the same about those statements after finishing I Have Some Questions for You. Wow, is this ever an interesting and compelling read! And I am not one who chooses to read mysteries, as a rule. And maybe that’s not the best way to reference this one either. Yet maybe it is.

The main character and our narrator, Bodie, is twenty years out from her New Hampshire boarding school career and the death–murder?–of her former roommate in school in the spring of their last year of school there. A man who’d worked as an athletic trainer at the school, Omar Evans, has been in prison for that crime and ever since, though there is a lot of concern and skepticism, especially now, about his wrongful imprisonment and the sketchy means used to get a confession from him way back then.

The perspective of the novel is extremely interesting, utilizing second person “you” as it directly addresses a particular “character” from that time in all of their lives.

And from there I say little else more…just that this is a very interesting and thought-provoking book, and I cannot WAIT to discuss it with my book club. Until then, I have little else to say but: hope you read it, too, and then PM me for our own discussion, please.