This newsletter is arriving in your mailboxes a tad later than we planned this month, but there is a reason. I just kept coming up with more to add to it. I am not kidding. I joke that, when I travel, I come up with ideas. Well, this summer I traveled a lot, so there was lots of time for thinking. Now that I have stopped traveling --- I am going nowhere for the entire month of September --- I am getting some new projects and programs into play.

I have zipped across the country so much this summer that I am glad that this weekend I am confining my adventures to the pool chair and hammock here at the house. Seriously I zipped back and forth over the midsection of the country and up and down the East Coast so much that I am ready to send a holiday card to Larry Kellner, the CEO of Continental, as I have seen him on the opening video more than I have seen most of my friends.

Last week I spent some time at the American Library Association Convention in Anaheim, which was a wonderful celebration of books and reading. Librarians are wildly enthusiastic about books and authors --- and they ask smart questions and provoke thoughtful replies when they are at panels and speeches.