The Baltimore Book Festival - a Signing!

The Baltimore Book Festival - A Signing!

A year ago, I went to the very soggy Baltimore Book Festival and had a great time even though the liquid sunshine was intense. Back then, I was a soon-to-be published author. This year, I have a book and a book signing slot!

This Friday through Sunday (September 25-27) at Mt. Vernon Place, the 14^th annual Baltimore Book Festival will spread out from the 600 block of North Charles Street with books, authors, food, performances, and fun.

Again this year I'll be volunteering with my publisher, Peg Silloway of The Silloway Press, at the MidAtlantic Book Publishers Association booth. And, on Friday afternoon at 2:00, I'll be meeting visitors and signing my book!

Last year as we sloshed around in the rain, Peg and I said, "Next year we'll be here with a Margaret Rome book." It was a big goal, and we've had adventures along the way, but we did it! Thanks to friends and supporters, the book is a success. This year, we'll be checking out booth locations for next year's festival. By then, Peg will have her Cat Lover's Book of Days along with the second in the Book of Days series available.

This year's list of authors at the festival is long and as varied as astronaut Buzz Aldrin, mystery writer Donna Andrews, and political commentator Gwen Ifill. There are readings, panel discussions, and great weather forecast. So if you are near Baltimore and want a fun afternoon, come to the Baltimore Book Festival this weekend. Please stop by and say "Hi!" on Friday between 2:00 and 3:00!

Lovin' Live Baltimore

Last evening was the big Live Baltimore reception and new website debut. The venue was gorgeous – Symphony Center in downtown Baltimore, just across from the Meyerhoff Symphony Hall. Real estate professionals came to network and learn more about what Live Baltimore does to encourage people to live in Baltimore City. People stopped at a large city map to find their homes in one of Baltimore's more than 200 neighborhoods. And right next to the map was…me! Live Baltimore had generously offered to include a book signing in the evening's festivities, so there I was, signing and selling copies of Real Estate the Rome Way.

It was a huge success…and a lot of fun, too. Nancy Corporon was a delight as she bought the first book of the evening. Friends and colleagues stopped to chat. One nice surprise was having Activer Rainers Martha Brown and Margaret Woda stop by for a visit, especially since they took the time to drive some distance from their home area. Vito Simone who is president of the Greater Baltimore Board of Realtors was there, along with Kim Jones and Helen Dellheim.

Executive Director Anna Custer gave a lively overview of the new website, and a delightfully enthusiastic young woman named Cassandra spoke of how the program had helped her buy a home – she settled earlier this month – with financial assistance and valuable counseling.

It was a great evening, and I was so proud to be next to my best friend and publisher, Peg Silloway. I think the word is qvelling. Yep, I was qvelling for both of us. I think you can see in that photo of Helen, Lee, and me that Lee was qvelling a bit too.

Live Baltimore and a Book Signing

It's a slogan, it's an attitude, and on Thursday it will be an event. The Live Baltimore Home Center is a nationally recognized, independent nonprofit organization committed to promoting the benefits of Baltimore City living.

This Thursday, February 19, city lovers are invited to gather from 5:30 to7:30 pm at the Symphony Center located at 1020 Park Avenue, Baltimore, MD 21201 to celebrate Baltimore’s neighborhoods and check-out Live Baltimore’s new redesigned website.

The Symphony Center Apartments offer a stunning venue for this fun event in the heart of the Mt. Vernon neighborhood.

What makes the evening special for me is that I'll be able to meet and talk with many top real estate professionals about my book – Live Baltimore has arranged for the event to include a book signing!

If that weren't enough to get you to stop by, there will be complimentary appetizers and free city life gifts for all.

So if you're anywhere near Baltimore on Thursday, plan to stop and say hello. Hope to see you there!

Kluge The Book Signing…A Kluge-y Affair

I went one Saturday recently to a book signing at Barnes & Noble in Ellicott City. My friend's husband introduced his son Gary Marcus...well it was sort of an introduction, and a bit of kvelling, and maybe a bit of embarrassing praise for this very personable and very brilliant young man. Gary has a long list of accomplishments including graduating high school at 15 or, as Phil Marcus says, he dropped out of high school to go to college. He graduated from Hampshire College in Massachusetts and went on to get his Ph.D. at MIT. Now he's a professor of psychology at NYU.

Gary's book is Kluge: the Haphazard Construction of the Human Mind. He explained that a kluge (pronounced klooj) is "a clumsy or inelegant solution to a problem." Think of McGyver using duct tape, a piece of wood, and a bit of wire to create a weapon and defeat the villains.

Gary was quite entertaining with his examples of kluges which he describes as poor design, using as an example the human spine. How many people have back pain? Almost all. Now the spine was a perfect design for four legged creatures, but evolution has no foresight or hindsight, and has to work with what is there. So the humans wound up with the same spine meant for walking on all fours.

Another example of a kluge is the "clumsiness'' of the human mind. For example, we have trouble remembering things: "Where the heck are my car keys? Where is my car?" Unlike computers, we don't have erasers in our brain. So if we go to work each day and usually park in the same place, but then one day park somewhere else, when we come out we cannot remember the location of our car on that day. Gary learned to put his car keys in the same place to help with this particular clumsiness.

He talked about the skydiver who on the first jump has only one thing to remember. PULL the cord! But 6% of skydiver deaths happen because divers FORGET to pull the cord. That is why pilots are trained to use checklists for everything – we cannot trust our memories.

The computer does not forget; every bit of data that goes in has a time stamp and an assigned location. The brain has no time stamp, and can't go to a specific location to find information but has to make do with a system that was kluged together from what nature had available. Some people think the computer is smarter than the human, but not so. Humans create the GIGO (garbage in-garbage out) programming. He gave an example of a GPS in England that did not take into account that the roundabouts (traffic circles) go in the opposite direction from what we are used to. The computer in the GPS did exactly what it was programmed to do!

He also talked about how humans can be manipulated by understanding that our mind is not perfectly designed for rational thought. When you call the estate tax by another name – "Death Tax" – it becomes something horrible. The tax hasn't changed, but the perception has. Gary talked some about marketing and how our minds can fool us. In a grocery store, when they say "Limit 12" on a product, people purchase in larger quantities than they need. Normally they might buy one or two of the item, but with the limit they buy 6!

Gary was charming and interesting and had an attentive audience. Unfortunately, the setup was a kluge itself – a poor choice of location by the front door with people coming and going, the buzzer going off when merchandise was not checked out properly, a vacuum cleaner or some such noise. And me, I got a phone call at the end, had to leave, and forgot to buy the book.

I went to the signing to hear Gary, buy the book, have him sign it, and to see my friend. But my friend wasn't there because she had to go to a family graduation at the same time which I didn't know because my email was out. I forgot to buy the book and get it signed. At least I found the car when we left!