Wound up the summer at the Decatur Book Festival, where a good crowd turned up at the Presbyterian church on a Saturday afternoon as Elizabeth Hornor and I talked about all things Greek. Elizabeth gave me a tour of the Michael C. Carlos Museum at Emory University. You’ve heard of the Venus de Milo? Well, here we have the Aphrodite of Decatur, a Roman statue in marble, headless until recently. The head was found, bought, and reattached. I have a lot of nerve posing with her.

Earlier in August, I was invited to the Martha’s Vineyard Book Festival, and took the ferry from East 34th Street in Manhattan up Long Island Sound and into the open ocean. It was dark when we arrived, and a torch was burning down the street. There was no one to meet me at the ferry, and for a few awful moments I thought I had gotten off on the wrong island and that this was Nantucket. Call me Ishmael! Where I was going to find a room on such short notice on Nantucket? I kept looking at the sign on the terminal building, and it did say Oak Bluffs, but maybe that just meant it was the ferry to Oak Bluffs? Anyway, I found my friend’s number on my phone. She answered and reassured me that I was indeed on Martha’s Vineyard. She would be right there.

The other trip this summer was to Belfast, Maine, where the nice women at Left Bank Books welcomed me. Spent an extra day driving around Port Clyde, stopping for lobster, checking out the lighthouse.

And now, bring on the fall!