From Nashville to Philadelphia

A few weeks ago, I gave a talk on Vienna 1814 in the Senate Chambers of the State Capitol in Nashville. We had a wonderful crowd - thanks to all the people who packed the room, I enjoyed meeting everyone! Ed McClanahan and I decided to ride down to the Southern Festival of Books together. If you do not know Ed's books, do yourself a favor and get one now. What was it Bob Edwards said of him? "Most people who have had as much fun as Ed are dead."

Ed kindly indulged my curiosity about his adventures on the west coast in the sixties, not least with his friend Ken Kesey, the iconic psychedelic bus Further, and life in general as a Merry Prankster. The conversation spilled over, after arrival at the capitol, into the afternoon and late into the evening over an excellent dinner with Ed and Mark at Mambu's. The chefs, Anita and Corey, are fabulous. I look forward to reading Ed's latest book, O the Clear Moment, which has just come out. Here's a review in Newsday.

After Nashville, I headed north to give a talk on Vienna 1814 at the Napoleonic Historical Society Conference at the Union League in Philadelphia. What a wonderful weekend that was! The conference was outstanding in every sense, except for one: On Saturday, during a concert featuring music of the Grand Armée, news arrived that the Napoleonic scholar Ben Weider had died. If you don't know him, Weider was the author of several books on Napoleon, including Assassination at St. Helena Revisited with Sten Forshufvud and most recently Wars Against Napoleon with General Michel Franceschi. Just a few weeks before his death, Weider had donated about one hundred Napoleonic paintings, statues, snuffboxes, and other antiques from his personal collection to the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. This included, among other things, one of Napoleon's hats from the Russian campaign, one of shirts, and a couple locks of his hair.

Weider was president of the International Napoleonic Society and also served the International Federation of Bodybuilders (Mr. Olympia, Ms. International, etc.,.), which he co-established. So, in addition to having his books in my library, I have some of his weights in my gym. It was Ben and his brother Joe who brought an obscure Austrian bodybuilder named Arnold Schwarzenegger to the States in the late sixties and launched his career. J. David Markham gave a touching toast. The Napoleonic world has lost a champion. My condolences to his family and friends all over the world.

This weekend, I'll be doing a book signing for Finding Atlantis and Vienna 1814 at the Kentucky Book Fair. If you are in the area, stop by.

Kentucky Fried Oscars

Which state is Kentucky in, again? Okay I've never actually been asked that question, but it's a wonder and probably only a matter of time. In the six years or so that I lived and traveled in Europe, I was continually struck by what was by far the most common image of our state: Kentucky Fried Chicken. This was the case, too, despite the fact that KFC had been sold eons ago to Pepsi, and Harland David Sanders, or Colonel Sanders, had little experience of Kentucky before his fortieth birthday.

Our little state seems to excel at flying under the radar, merrily going about its business making booze, breeding thoroughbreds, and actually, in the last decade or so, producing some of the highest-profile celebs in the country. Two of the five Oscar nominees for Best Actor in a Leading Role this year, for example, are Kentuckians: George Clooney and Johnny Depp, and another Kentuckian, Ashley Judd, is surely up for something, or probably should be. (Image of Clooney and Depp above is from People's best dressed of 2007 issue and fashionolic). Beyond that, Kentucky continues to thrive in the literary arts, a long tradition that includes Robert Penn Warren, Hunter Thompson, Wendell Berry, Barbara Kingsolver, Sue Grafton, Silas House, and Jane Gentry Vance, now Poet Laureate. Kentucky's Gurney Norman wrote the counterculture classic, Divine Right's Trip, and Ed McClanahan lives here as well as all McClanafans know, he was one of the colorful Merry Pranksters who lit up the psychedelic Day-Glo magic bus Further with his good friend Ken Kesey. There isn't time to recount all the music and arts figures in the area. Let's just say that many came, saw, and left, but others have stayed, like Star Trek's William Shatner, who lives right down the road.

Yes image and reality don't always march hand-in-hand, or at least in the ways we often suspect. It should be interesting to see which impressions of the region stick, and which ones change, if any, as thousands descend on the Bluegrass for the upcoming World Equestrian Games.