Archives for January 4, 2010

Mrs. T and I flew the coop last Friday and headed down to Florida for a weekend of snow-free playgoing. On Saturday we saw Asolo Rep’s production of Bertolt Brecht’s Life of Galileo in Sarasota, then drove across the peninsula to West Palm Beach to catch a revival of Michael Frayn’s Copenhagen at Palm Beach Dramaworks.
Today we drive north to Winter Park, where I’ll be spending the next six weeks in residence at the Winter Park Institute, a talking-and-thinking shop on the campus of Rollins College, the liberal-arts school where I spoke last March. That experience was so uncomplicatedly enjoyable that I happily accepted an invitation to set up shop there this winter. Among other things, I’ll be giving speeches, teaching a class in journalistic criticism, and signing copies of Pops: A Life of Louis Armstrong whenever and wherever anybody puts one in front of me.
Life goes on no matter where I happen to be, so I’ll be spending my weekends seeing plays on Broadway and elsewhere in Florida and writing about them in The Wall Street Journal. I’ll also be making a pair of Pops-related appearances on Thursday and Saturday in Washington, D.C., and at the Louis Armstrong House Museum in Queens. (Read all about them here.)
Insofar as possible, though, I mean to settle into the life of a peripatetic academic. I teach my first class tomorrow–and I can’t wait.
UPDATE: It’s not warm enough in West Palm Beach this morning! Can I send this state back for a refund?

“Every artist is in business for his health.”
Patricia Highsmith, notebook entry, August 31, 1966