Questions from the Author Fair

Saturday afternoon, seventy Hoosier authors 

met visitors to the Indiana Historical Society's 

12th Annual Holiday Author Fair. 

From noon until four o'clock people streamed 

into Eli Lilly Hall, browsing the varied offerings, 

talking with the authors, and buying books.

Among the more popular authors present was

Bobby "Slick" Leonard, Hoosier basketball legend,

who happily met his many admirers and signed

their copies of his book.

In this case, it's a pleasure to say that the

sports books outsold the offerings from a couple

of the more strident representatives of

a radically conservative leaning, by about two to one.

You go, Slick!

I spent the afternoon seated between a man 

who had written a book about Hoosier prisoners 

at Andersonville, one of the largest of the 

Confederate military prisons of the Civil War, 

and Ed Wenck, whose book

Hoosier Killers: Indiana's Darkest History,

sold out long before the event concluded.

What I found most interesting was the number of 

people who spoke to him who told of murders

in their families, one recounting the slaughter

of an entire household of relatives.

We read every day of random shootings,

of brutalities visited in almost routine fashion

upon people we regard as "others," "not us."

These people, all white, all middle class,

were also carrying around this terrible burden.

Isn't it about time we acknowledged this horror is

just below the surface of our existences,

that we share unspeakable sorrows?

Maybe then we could come together for a way

to lessen the number of these tragedies. 

Most of the visitors were adults, which led me 

to also wonder if we were seeing the last of a generation 

that uses shredded trees as a reading device. 

Myself, I love the smell of ink, the feel of paper 

in my hand, and the look and rhythm 

of a well-designed page. How will it be 

for the ones coming along with e-devices?