Reading for English

The college brings guest speakers on campus whenever they can. They try to get speakers for different topics and in different subject areas so that there are plenty of opportunities for enrichment of the students and employees. The most recent speaker was an author, Michael D’Orso. He has published 15 books and been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize three times. His latest book, Eagle Blue, is about a high school basketball team in Fort Yukon, Alaska.

My English instructor offered us extra credit to read Eagle Blue, come hear the author speak and write a small report on the book. I took her up on her offer in order to get the 10 bonus points on one of my grades. I know what you’re thinking, “You read a book?” but to be fair, I don’t claim to never read books, I just claim I only read them for assignments. I finished reading the book this past Saturday and began working on the short report. Sunday night I was finishing up the report when I started thinking about it. I begin to recall what I was doing in the Winter/Spring of 2005 (when the story took place).

D’Orso was researching material for this book while I was starting my new job and we were finishing our move across state. At that time we were traveling back and forth still and trying to meet up with everyone we could since we were relocating (kind of saying our goodbyes). One of those weekends we met up with my former co-worker, Joy. I hadn’t talked to her in a few years and she was excited to meet Chloe. We went to her place to have dinner and hang out. Joy was in a nice house and I joked about how she was moving on up in the world. She told me that it wasn’t her place – she was house-sitting for an author who was in Alaska for several months working on a book. It was at that moment that it all flooded in to my conscious mind. Wait, is that right? Was I in this author’s house while he was working on the book I just read?

The next day I checked my old emails at work and sure enough the timing and location seemed right. I had to find out – I had to meet this guy and ask him. Long story short, it WAS him and that WAS his house. He is friends with Joy and she had house-sat for him while he was away. He offered to pass my business card along to her and let her know he had met me. I haven’t spoken to Joy in a few years now, but it would be nice to catch up with her again.

The world truly is a small place after all. I’m still amazed sometimes by the people I’ve met (or know) and the number of degrees of separation that exist. No matter how exciting the overall experience was though, I’m still not going to take up reading. LOL