Love story: Book festivals bring readers, writers together -- Sept. 15, 2016 column

By MARSHA MERCER

We think of reading as a solitary pastime, but it’s often social and cultural as well.

Who wants to talk about a great book? Just about everybody, as the explosion of book clubs in recent years attests.

Bring writers into the conversation, and you have a book fair. Add more readers and writers, and it’s a book festival.

About 75 book fairs and festivals are now held in 43 states. More than 120 authors and illustrators and upwards of 100,000 people are expected to throng the 15^th annual National Book Festival on Sept. 24 in the Walter E. Washington Convention Center in the nation’s capital.

Stephen King, whose books have sold an amazing 350 million copies worldwide, is the festival’s marquee draw. If you didn’t snag a free ticket for his sold-out appearance, you can still visit with big names.

No tickets are required for the other speakers, who, unlike King, will sign their books. Among them: filmmaker Ken Burns, journalist Bob Woodward and authors from at least seven foreign countries.

The celebration surrounding the opening of the Museum of African American History and Culture the same day likely will extend to the festival, where the roster includes basketball great Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, civil rights leader Rep. John Lewis, television producer Shonda Rhimes and novelist Colson Whitehead.

In addition, many readers may see Carla Hayden, the new Librarian of Congress for the first time. Hayden, the first African American and the first woman in the position, was sworn in Wednesday.

Free and with programs for all ages, the national festival is the legacy of first lady Laura Bush, a former librarian with the lifelong mission of inspiring people to read.  

In November, the Texas Book Festival, which Bush started when she was first lady of Texas, will mark its 20^th anniversary. She and the Library of Congress launched the national festival in 2001, just three days before the horrors of 9/11.

Bush didn’t invent book fairs, of course, but she did popularize them for modern readers.

Book fairs got their first 20^th century boost in 1919, when a Chicago department store held Book Week. One hundred thousand customers poured into the store to shake hands with 14 authors and buy books from 60 publishers, Bernadine Clark wrote in “Fanfare for Words,” a 1991 history of book fairs published by the Library of Congress.

The Miami Book Fair started in 1984 and the Southern Festival of Books in Nashville in 1989. The Tennessee festival takes place Oct. 14 through 16.

In Virginia, the Fall for the Book festival, sponsored by George Mason University, runs Sept. 25 to 30, and the Virginia Festival of the Book is next set for March in Charlottesville. The 2017 Alabama Book Festival will be held in April in Montgomery.

Festivals are quick-hit gatherings for readers and writers, but the nation’s first, permanent celebration of American writers past and present is in the works. The American Writers Museum is under construction on the second floor of an office tower in downtown Chicago and plans to open in March.

The idea for the museum came from Ireland, where the Dublin Writers Museum honors great Irish writers. In this country, the writers museum will fill a void, says Jim Leach, former chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

“We collect in central points the artifacts of civilization and honor politicians and soldiers, athletes, artists, inventors and entrepreneurs, but we neglect our writers,” Leach said in a statement on the museum’s website.

It probably won’t surprise anyone that Laura Bush is among those supporting the writers museum.

Like the Texas and national book festivals and literary events around the country, the new museum will “celebrate writers of every era, every genre and every race,” she says in a video, and “inspire everyone to fall in love with reading and writing.”

I hope she’s right.

©2016 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

Wisdom of the soap: Vote and Feel Good -- Sept. 8, 2016 column

By MARSHA MERCER

A couple of election seasons ago, I brought home an oversized bar of soap that read VOTE on one side and FEEL GOOD on the other.

I put it in my guest bath, mostly as a joke, and after the election it went into a drawer. I came across the soap the other day and realized it had outlasted my enthusiasm for voting.

Pulling the lever for president has never seemed so much a duty and so little a pleasure.

In less than two months, millions of Americans will stay home on Election Day. After the hoopla of the 2016 primary campaign and amid tightening polls, many Americans won’t cast ballots for any presidential candidate. We know this from experience.

Four years ago, about 58 percent of eligible voters – citizens 18 and older -- cast ballots in the presidential election, lower than in both 2008 and 2004, an analysis by the Bipartisan Policy Center found. And presidential races draw our biggest turnouts. 

Voting long has been promoted as the top item on good citizens’ to-do lists. Now, though, some commentators say we should stop shaming people who don’t want to vote into doing so anyway.

In his new book, “Writings on the Wall,” basketball legend and cultural critic Kareem Abdul-Jabbar writes: “In the 2014 midterm elections, less than 37 percent of eligible voters showed up, which left 144 million votes taking a pass on democracy. But that’s not necessarily a bad thing.”

Best to leave nonvoting slugs alone, he says.

“Voters who don’t want to cast a ballot because they’re too lazy or uninformed should stay home,” he writes.

In an interview on NPR, he went a step further: “Ignorance is not something that lends itself to a meaningful discussion. Some of these people really shouldn’t vote because they don’t know what the issues are, and I think people that are, you know, voting in the blind are doing a disservice to our country by not being better informed.”

Abdul-Jabbar spoke against Donald Trump at the Democratic National Convention in July, and, while he didn’t mention Trump in his book or the radio interview, the clear implication is that ignorant Trump voters should just stay home.  

No matter how dangerous we think a Trump – or a Hillary Clinton – presidency would be, telling voters with whom we disagree to stay home is an arrogant stand on a slippery slope.

Anyone can look at another voter and think he or she lacks the brainpower to cast an informed ballot. It goes against the small-d democratic grain to discourage people from voting simply because we think their choice of candidate proves they’re not smart enough.

That brings us to the age-old question of how to get voters engaged so they educate themselves on the issues rather than falling for appeals based on anger and anxiety.

Abdul-Jabbar also says we should stop encouraging people to vote out of civic duty but rather “show them the wisdom of voting based on economic self-interest in order to give themselves, their families and their communities more opportunities.”

Poor people would have more clout if they voted in greater numbers, he says.

But many Trump voters think they are voting in their economic self-interest.

Trump’s unorthodox campaign brought voters into the system who felt ignored by Democrats and Republicans. They believe this GOP nominee speaks for them when he promises to bring back jobs and stop illegal immigration.

Whether he could deliver on those promises is another story, but Trump has struck an emotional chord.

To boost voters’ intelligence, Abdul-Jabbar proposes a federal initiative to teach more about critical thinking and logical fallacies in public schools. It’s an idea worth considering – and a nonstarter in the current climate.

Until voters demand more thoughtful, substantive discussions on issues, we’ll continue to have celebrity-driven campaigns punctuated by amateur personality analyses, name calling and fear mongering.

And we’re left with the choice – to vote or not. Once again, I’m putting out the soap to give my guests and myself a nudge.

VOTE? Yes, we should. FEEL GOOD? We’ll see.

©2016 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

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