Here are some pictures from the My South Party – an event to celebrate Mississippi writers, musicians, artists, and chefs. Lemuria headed up the writers part of the evening.
Jeanie with Honeyboy Edwards
John and Jeanie
Joe, Leisha Pickering, and Maggie
Wendy having her picture made with Willie King
The My South centerpiece
No explanation needed
The party from above.
My zest for pictures of my daughter and authors is pretty obvious. I hope to have enough to do a calendar this Christmas. Here she appears (nasty red eye) with one of my favorite authors – Robert Stone.
I know I know, I should have written about this earlier, but it’s hard to know what to say when one of the greatest living writers is coming to the store. We had a great event Friday night with Harrison. The whole thing’s a bit intimidating though – I mean other than Harper here, what do you talk about with a genius?
Here is something that I just read in one of my favorite blogs. Seth Godin is talking about employees who are the kind of folks that have been raised to be obedient and are given brain dead jobs – people who follow like sheep. He says it much better than I can. Anyway, this makes me think about the difference between the Independent and the chain book store. Hopefully there are enough booksellers at Lemuria to be different. Enough people who are really trying to do something different, think creatively, and make a real bookstore.
A few years ago I read Michael Gerber’s book, The E-Myth Revisited. The premise is that the really fun way to make money in small business is to start something that fills a need, then streamline it so that it is franchisable, finally, sell and make a bundle. Well, this is exactly what the Independent Bookstore can’t do – we don’t want to streamline our services – we want to do for people what the big guys can’t do. We actually read books.
