Archiving my work

Hi everyone,

I’m happy to say that all of my manuscripts, drafts, correspondence, and other papers are now in Springfield. For decades I had close ties with the people who hosted the annual Children’s Literature Festival on the University of Central Missouri campus in Warrensburg, Missouri. During the thirty-six years in which I was one of the participating authors, I began placing my papers in the James C. Kirkpatrick Library.

More recently I’ve placed my work at the Duane G. Meyer Library on the Missouri State University campus in Springfield. Recently I decided it was time to consolidate both collections into one and house it in Meyer Library to make it more accessible for students and others with an interest in looking back through my history as a writer since my first publications fifty-five years ago.

Campus scenes for viewbook . Bob Linder/ Missouri State

I’m grateful to TOM PETERS, Dean of the Meyer Library, for driving to Warrensburg to retrieve my work there and bringing it all to Springfield. I’m sure it will take time to make the combined papers a complete collection available for study, but I’ll make an announcement here when I’m told it’s all ready.

Missed the date

Hi everyone,

For some reason I’ve been thinking that today — April 4 — marks the anniversary of when Mayor ROBERT STEPHENS proclaimed, by vote of the City Council and at the urging of City Manager GREG BURRIS, David Harrison Day. Turns out it was two days ago on April 2, 1914. I loved everything about the event. CHERRI JONES and other folks at Duane G. Meyer Library put together a display of my work, I gave a talk, and an amazing group of Springfield equity actors read from some of my books.

This isn’t an annual event. It just happened once, but I had such great fun! My thanks again to Greg Burris, who was then our City Manager, Robert Stephens, who was then our Mayor, and to the members of the City Council at that time as well as Dean Tom Peters, Cherri Jones, and staff at Meyer Library. Even though I missed the actual date, I still have fond memories of that day nine years and two days ago.

I had a fine time

Hi everyone,

I’m delighted to say that we had a good turnout last night at the Library Center and most of them were old friends, many of whom I’ve known for decades. I couldn’t have asked for a better night or way to introduce THIS LIFE to a supportive audience. My heartfelt thanks to everyone who braved the cold and remaining snow to be there and share my evening. Thanks to ANGELA KNIGHT (librarian at Harrison Elementary School) for taking this picture of my trying to think. That’s my editor for the book, RACHEL KERSEY, who did a great job of feeding me good questions. TOM PETERS, Dean of the magnificent Duane Meyer Library, was there, too, and handled book sales. It was Tom’s decision to publish my memoir so I’m especially grateful to him.

Tonight I’ll hope for another good experience when I start talking about and reading from THIS LIFE at Pagination Bookshop at 1150 E. Walnut at 6:00. Again there will be time for questions and answers.

Coming up next is an interview with MICHELE SKALICKY at KSMU next Wednesday morning at 9:15. I will let you know when it will be aired.

An interview for the archives

Hi everyone,

On Tuesday Tom Peters, Dean of Meyer Library on the Missouri State University campus in Springfield, came over to do a video/interview about my work for their archives. This was the second session about my writing. After editing, the videos will be added to the collection of manuscripts and correspondence that I recently placed in the MSU archives. Both interviews ran over an hour so if you should ever want to watch them, better take your computer to a comfortable chair.

The first time Tom interviewed me was for the MSU series, OZARK VOICES. That was in September 2014 and was also a long one. Here’s the link to it. I’m #23. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLyugBRJhQ4EwftBGQOCn2HDmPk2-9cAMd .

This afternoon I have more than a dozen errands to run. Getting set to goo foff is serious business!