Archives for December 15, 2009

Here’s what I looked like talking about Pops: A Life of Louis Armstrong on Chicago’s WGN-TV earlier today:
 

If you’re (A) a resident of the greater Chicago area and (B) anywhere near a TV set at 11:35 on Tuesday morning, I urge you to tune in Channel 9 and watch me talk about Pops: A Life of Louis Armstrong on the “Midday Fix” segment of WGN’s Midday News.
If you’re really feeling adventurous, I’ll be speaking about and signing copies of Pops at the Highland Park Public Library at seven p.m. The library is located at 494 Laurel Avenue in Highland Park. Go here for more information.
Next stop: St. Louis. More about that on Wednesday. Later!

Four years ago today I informed the readers of this blog that I’d just had a brush with death. Last week I received this message from one of my Twitter followers:

take it easy bub, don’t push it. u r livin’ a dream, so that might sound like envy, yet we W@ched u take a pit stop a few ago

Not to worry. I’m doing my very best to take it as easy as possible out on the road, and the craziness will end on Friday when I wrap up the current leg of my book tour and head for Smalltown, U.S.A., there to spend a week in the bosom of my family and (I hope) get some much-needed sleep. In the meantime, I’m overflowing with gratitude, not just for the unexpected success of Pops: A Life of Louis Armstrong but for the great good fortune that has come my way in the past four years, starting with–and above all–the arrival of Mrs. T.
May all of you be at least as lucky in 2010.

“The blaze of a reputation cannot be blown out, but it often dies in the socket.”
Samuel Johnson, letter to Hester Thrale (May 1, 1780)