Visiting the First Folio

The Folger Shakespeare Library is taking a copy of the First Folio out on tour to every state, even Idaho. And Boise State University has been hosting the book for nearly the last month. This rare book has been displayed less than half a mile from where I live since August 20th and I finally got around to visiting it last Saturday.

Naturally, I dragged my husband along with me. I sold it to him as a nice walk to see an old book, but he spent much of the walk insisting that he had no idea what we were going to see.

The book itself was under glass in a temperature and humidity controlled environment, as can be expected for a book nearly 400 years old, one of only 233 extant copies. It was laid open to Hamlet's "To Be or Not To Be" soliloquy, and I was glad to arrive early enough that it wasn't crowded so I could take the time to read that section. I will admit, I struggled with the font, but it was a worthy struggle.

Photography was allowed as long as there was no flash, so I had Ambrose take my picture to prove my presence near the book itself. And I took a couple pictures of the book by itself.

I was there, within inches of setting off the alarms on the First Folio's case. 

The book was kept around 65.3 degrees in its case. 

Someone was taking pictures with their cell phone, saying that she hoped she would be able to blow the picture up and read the book with it. I took this picture with my backpacking camera, and no amount of zooming is going to make the pages legible. I wish her the best of luck. 

Overall, it was a nice walk to visit an old book. We saw and greeted a couple of my colleagues from work as we were leaving. And soon enough we were home again.

But I have now read from a copy of the First Folio and I'm too much of a Johnnie not to appreciate that.

Author Event: John Scalzi

Last Thursday was a momentous occasion. John Scalzi, for the very first time, visited both Boise and Idaho. He is an Idaho virgin no longer.

To celebrate, he stopped by the Boise Public Library and held a reading (sponsored by Rediscovered Books, which does not - at the moment - have the space to hold such an event). Personally, I had never been to the William F. Hayes Memorial Auditorium, and so, in that both Scalzi and I were breaking new ground.

Since I have a Boise State parking permit, my husband and I chose to park there and then walk to the library, considering that there may be a crowded lot at the library. As we crossed the wooden bridge into the Anne Frank Memorial, I spotted Scalzi entering the library with an escort - identification certainty of 95%. I mean, I've never met him before, but he posts a lot of pictures of himself online.

We entered the library, and I immediately identified the location of the restrooms, because I need to know these things. Then we walked into the auditorium.

It's not really an auditorium. It doesn't fit my conception of one at any rate, which would have to contain, minimally, a stage and tiered seating. This is a meeting room. A classroom even. Chairs were lined up facing a table and podium, and behind the chairs was a long table covered in books. (All by John Scalzi - conspiracy or coincidence?)

I chose a seat near the front. Not the front row itself, mostly because it was occupied, but also because you never know which people might spit when they talk.

My husband and I settled in to wait, observing the room filling, noticing that Scalzi was chatting with the event organizers in the rear, and giggling a bit that the couple behind us did not recognize him, despite having walked right by him, close enough, because of the dimensions of the entrance, to have touched him in passing.

When it was time for the reading to begin, Scalzi was introduced to applause and then proceeded to outline the evening's events. He would be reading from an upcoming work, and then from some humor pieces and from his blog, Whatever.

I would love to explain in explicit detail the content of the reading from his upcoming urban fantasy, but I'm under strict orders to simply lord the fact that I know and you don't over you. Therefore, I must sum up that experience up as follows: I enjoyed listening to Scalzi read aloud from his work. His reading voice is not monotonous or boring, and it's neat to hear character inflections from the author himself. This novella sound really neat, and you should be jealous of me. And my husband. And everyone else who managed to attend one of Scalzi's many tour stops. Still a limited club!

The next two pieces he read for us were from an ancient website known as America Online. I am, in fact, old enough to have had an AOL account. Just - I was 13 when we got it. The pieces were from when he wrote for their humor section, which I'm pretty sure I never read, being more interested in chat at that age (I got my reading fixes from books - made of paper!). They were topical for the time of year, focused on back to school, one aimed at gradeschoolers and one at parents. Both were amusing.

Scalzi then read from a relatively recent blog entry from Whatever, "Standard Responses to Online Stupidity." I, being a regular reader of the blog, had already read that particular entry. However, again, the experience of having it read aloud by the author was quite enjoyable. For some reason, especially the single swear word in number 8.

Once the reading portion of the evening was concluded, the signing portion could begin. There were a few rules, reasonable limits on the number of books that could be signed at a time (if you wanted more, you were free to go back to the end of the line). Photographs were welcome, and Rediscovered Books even offered a photographer. We snaked our line through the chairs, so as not to trail out into the library, and I got in line to wait while my husband walked over to where he could take the picture when I got there.

I chatted a bit with other people in line, commiserating with one that the event had a distinct lack of ukulele and yodeling (to which Scalzi replied, "I heard that!"). The wait was not too long, since I had been sitting near the front, and there, I finally asked the question that had been burning inside me since July 22nd, when my husband and I went to see a movie for our meet-iversary and I saw that our theater offered Oreo churros.

"Oreo churros - abomination or awesome?" I said. I had to repeat it, partially because he was surprised I think (and partially because I was nervous and speaking softly).

The face of a man who likes churros. 

Scalzi proceeded to give me much more than I expected. Not a simple yes or no, but an enthusiastic explanation which boiled down to the cinnamon churro flavor being an intrinsic part of its churro-ness for him. Nothing against others who like Oreo churros, but for him they are not properly partaking of churro-ness - although a churro flavored Oreo would be acceptable.

This question gave him something to use for personalizing my book, and I now am the proud owner of a copy of Old Man's War inscribed thusly:

I then got my picture taken with him, because I could. All in all, a nice way to spend a Thursday evening.

Before next time, I will teach Ambrose how to use the zoom.

Or maybe I was told to write that. You wouldn't know. After all, you weren't there... or were you?

Author Encounter: Dean Wesley Smith

I’ll admit I was a bit upset when I realized that my weekend plans were already set before I found out that an author whose blog I have been reading for nearly two years was coming to Boise. Boise, of all places! And there’s no way I would want to cancel the first excursion into the woods of the year. It had been too long since I basked in the greatness of the outdoors. But I had a hope that, just maybe, I’d get back into town in time on Saturday.

And, not because of any planning, but because of a fallen log blocking the road, my husband and I ended up staying at a different campsite than we had planned. And, in the end, we got home in plenty of time for me to shower, get changed and ride my bike downtown to Rediscovered Books.

I wasn’t sure where they would be holding the signing, because I’d never been to that particular bookstore before. And since it was part of the Saturday Market, for all I knew there was a booth where they’d stuck him, outside in the not-so-fine spring weather. So I took a peek inside the store, and there sat Dean Wesley Smith, easily recognizable thanks to the pictures on his blog.

I popped partway in, then out, and then, decisively in.

For The Last Unicorn Tour, there was a rather large crowd, and although I got the impression that Peter S. Beagle would have been happy to chat with each and every one of us for hours on end, his handlers kept the line moving briskly. The Distinguished Lecture with Salman Rushdie offered no chance to meet the author, and the one with Margaret Atwood I chose not to wait in the line for a chance.

But here, in this local bookstore, sat an author whose blog I much admired - nary a line nor handler to be seen. So I made brave to walk right up and speak.

“I feel like I’ve won a scavenger hunt! Since you didn’t mention this trip on your blog,” was my opening gambit. He seemed a bit surprised by it, but was open to conversing as he explained that he and his wife preferred not to advertise in advance online when they would both be absent from their house. Perfectly sensible, I agreed.

From there I managed to introduce myself as a reader of his blog, one who had not yet read his fiction but was looking to purchase something that day. He made a suggestion based off my expressed preference for science fiction and fantasy of Smith’s Monthly #3. I explained that I was too shy to comment on his blog, though I intended to do so after our conversation. He, in turn, made it clear that I was welcome to email him if I had a question and didn’t want to make a public comment.

We spoke of writing. I told him about my published backpacking books and he was very encouraging. I even got some advice as to the genre of my not yet published novel. I didn’t feel like it was romance because it isn’t like romance that I’ve read. Dean pointed out that if the center of the story is a relationship and the story ends on a happy/hopeful note, then it is a romance. So now I have a better idea of how to brand it on the cover and back copy.

I felt, for the most part, quite comfortable, and would have been happy to chat for hours, but I could see another person hovering and didn’t feel it was right to monopolize him. Even though I wanted to. Especially because the other person was wearing a name tag indicating he was participating in the Idaho Writer Rendezvous conference and would get a chance to attend sessions with Dean… grumble grumble.

I left happy though. I got my magazine signed and some writing encouragement that I really needed in the moment. Not to mention the magazine - itself a lesson in layout as well as story. If I ever get the chance to see Dean Wesley Smith again, I will definitely go for it.

Margaret Atwood Distinguished Lecture

I read that the doors would open at 6:30pm for the Margaret Atwood lecture, so I planned to arrive, with my husband, a little before that time. I figured we would mill about for a few minutes outside the Jordan Ballroom before being allowed inside.

Instead, the doors were already opened and the seats starting to fill, at least in the front. I wondered whether the large numbers of chairs in the rear section would fill as we found a pair of seats on an aisle to stage right. I wondered around a bit, looking for and greeting a classmate.

By the time the lecture was about to start, my concerns about whether or not there would be a full house were changed to wondering if we were going to be violating fire code:

When Margaret Atwood took the stage, she began with what seemed like an extemporaneous bit of talking. She said that people had been asking her why she came to Boise, to which she replied, "Why not?" And she revealed to us that more people in Toronto should be coming to Boise at this time of year, since Boise had something that Toronto would not for another four weeks. Flowers. Which made me think of The Handmaid's Tale and the importance that that narrator places on flowers.

And then she began what seemed to be her prepared speech. I marveled that she seemed to be nervous.

Margaret Atwood, nervous?

And so she spoke of the power of words, and then began to speak of the infamous Clean Reader App. I wonder if she was being polite by not mentioning that it was the invention of parents in Idaho or simply did not know. After all, the creators of the app were not the important part. The important part was how the app slaughtered the meaning of works - the carefully intended meaning of their creators. And how the app makers had neglected, in many cases, to gain the consent of the authors whose works they were scrubbing. 

Atwood regaled us with some great examples of how the app caused unintentional hilarity. For example, since the word "breast" was deemed unclean, the reader would be forced to confront what exactly the author meant by writing "chicken chest." We laughed at each example, causing her to call us easy to amuse. I would say not easy to amuse, but giddy at her presence. (We don't get visitors like her very often in Boise.) Her solution for readers who found words that offended them in a text was to shut the offending book, and, if desired, fling it across the room. That is any reader's right. 

She spoke of running a conference session on "The Men's Novel" at which she and the other attendees had great fun ruminating at length over the definition thereof (a book with no women, of course, would qualify, such as Moby Dick). A fellow session leader had a less humorous time trying to get two groups of women, older ones who preferred less "language" (swearing) in books, and a group of women who argued quite loudly against using patriarchal language (while using patriarchal language). 

The power of language is evident throughout recorded history. Prayers and spells and names, words used to curse and bless and implore. Creativity and story served survival purposes, teaching communities how to survive in the ways that are best remembered: as stories and poems and songs. We use our memories of stories to anticipate the future. Stories get under our skin and make us feel empathy for the other, fostering the ability to survive in community. 

On writing, Atwood brought up word choices. How they must fit the setting, the narrator's voice and their vocabulary. Writing in the past poses different problems from writing in the future. The past is already recorded and research can reveal how words were used at the time. The future requires imagining which words have disappeared, what swears might become and what new words would be created. 

Spelling: Spell - coincidence?

Atwood is writing the first book for the future library, a project in Norway that intends to send books into the future. Each year, for a hundred years, a book will be chosen and sealed away, not to be read until 2114. This project represents hope. Hope that readers will still exist in a hundred years. That the future reader might be able to understand the words written before their parents were born, in an era that will probably look quite distant and quaint from their perspective. The reader brings themselves into the experience of the book. 

Atwood answered questions after her lecture. Some questions on writing, during which she recommended Wattpad, and terribleminds. She revealed one of her hard lines of censorship (child porn with real children should be censored) while also stating that there are lessons to be learned from Mein Kampf. 

On the use of religion in The Handmaid's Tale, Atwood stated that a religion used as a tool of political control simply becomes an ideology. Totalitarianism doesn't really have religion. But in the US, she thought the easiest route to totalitarianism would be through religious ideas, and so that's how she set the story. 

A positive opinion of fan fiction, as it is as old as the hills - even slash. 

And when a young woman asked her for advice on how to make her way, I tried my best to write down her exact words, but I couldn't keep up, so I will leave off the quotation marks and end with a paraphrase: 

Have good parents. Have good teachers. Don't believe those who would put you down. If you can't go through, go around. Don't give up. 

A Fan Is a Fan Is a Fan

Oh, Canada... I thought you were a country where liking hockey didn't have a gender. Women and men hockey fans screaming for (or at, in the case of Toronto) their teams in harmony.

And then you go and do something like this: "Puck bunny watchers are about to skate into overtime. Or at the very least convince their significant others to get into the game one night per week. W Network confirmed on Monday afternoon that its latest reality offering, Hockey Wives, is lighting up the screens come March[.]"

What does that even mean? What in the heck is a "puck bunny watcher" and why do I feel it is horribly insulting? Where has my fantasy of hockey fandom equality gone?

I mean, it seems to me that a puck bunny watcher would be someone who watches puck bunnies... which are supposed to be female hockey fans who only watch so they can stare at sexy men... who are completely covered in armor and padding?

Oh, Canada... you mean you added "puck bunny" to the dictionary? And it means, "a young female hockey fan, esp. one motivated more by a desire to watch, meet, or become esp. sexually involved with the players than by an interest in the sport itself."

Well, heaven forbid that any fan should want to meet the players of the sport they're watching! What kind of REAL fan wants to actually meet players instead of sit in front of a computer tallying up advanced statistics and never actually watching the game for the pure joy of competition and athleticism on display? How dare young female fans desire to watch their favorite players? How dare young women get crushes on handsome professional athletes, as if they have nothing better to do?

Is this show supposed to be a primer for the puck bunny - here's how to get a hockey husband? Or are the lives of women who happen to be married to professional athletes so interesting that the so-called puck bunnies would get their spouses to watch this show?

Come on, Canada. If a woman wants to watch hockey, she will probably be watching hockey, whether you call her a puck bunny or not. If she doesn't, no reality "wives" show is going to turn anyone into a hockey fan.

Can't we just all be fans, screaming for our teams, proudly wearing (or disgustedly tossing, in the case of Toronto) our jerseys and hoping that this could be the night we get to lose our hats?

The Distinguished Lecture Part 2: Sir Salman Rushdie

continued from The Distinguished Lecture Part 1: Preparation

My husband can be a bit obsessive about being on time. And to him, on time is not precisely on time. On time is no less than 5 minutes early. In this case, the doors for the even opened at 6:30 and we arrived no later than 6:25.

Since we arrived into a crowded lobby, I had no complaints. We made our way slowly to the back row of the main level, taking seats in the center where the back row transitioned from folding seats to chairs on a platform. And we proceeded to watch the theater fill. Not once, not twice, but three times an announcement was made asking people to please move towards the middle.

It seemed no one had expected such a large crowd. And this event was competing the the Transiberian Orchestra!

There were introductory remarks by the man in charge of the Distinguished Lecture series and then Sir Rushdie was introduced by the President of Boise State, Bob Kustra. And then, at last, on to the stage walked the man we were all waiting to see.

He received a standing ovation before saying a single word. And told us, quite politely, that we were supposed to stand at the end.

I had expected an interesting accent from a man raised in India, having lived in London and then New York. But he did not have a strong one to my ears. More what I would call an English affect than accent. He spoke clearly and articulately. And he began by asking why would we all have braved the chill weather to see a writer speak.

He spoke of the role of literature and particularly the role of the novel. The current news media seems more to propagate fear than understanding. Shit expands to fill the feeds until there's no room for anything else but disaster after disaster. A novel is a way to experience the lives of others, in other cultures, and find understanding.

We are creatures of story, story animals. And we have a fundamental right to story.

Politics and literature both offer stories, but only literature advertises its stories as fiction.

Even in the United States, there have been attempts to censor books like Harry Potter, because they encourage the practice of witchcraft and evil. This does not mean that censorship is correct, but rather that "crazy assholes are here, too."

Some of the themes in the lecture I recognized from Joseph Anton. Sir Rushdie used the example of Charlie Brown and the football to illustrate how character defines destiny. Charlie Brown can never kick the football, because to do so would be to violate his very character. But when chaos intrudes, it is no longer character that defines destiny. Being a good person doesn't stop the suicide bomber from choosing to detonate near you.

Novelists no longer have the luxury that Jane Austen did to write of a contained space, ignoring the wars that rage around it. The public and the private have been conflated, and a novel that ignored the world to that extent would not be able to have the same impact.

He spoke of the self as being multiple and fragmented. Human characters are broad and inconstant, but we are being asked, even forced at times, to choose single definitions to fit ourselves in. Convenient chyrons to choose sides. News channel affiliations so we only listen to people we agree with.

Art outlasts tyranny. Pushing boundaries is the job of the writer.

That was the end of the lecture, but a question and answer period followed a second standing ovation.

One questioner asked about getting students to read literature, which brought about an answer I liked. "I kind of resist the idea of the usefulness of books." It tickles me to think of literature as useless, but he did not mean that in the sense of having no use, but rather, I think, that literature should not be a tool. Or not be created as a tool. An author should not set out to create a teaching moment, a path to show the reader the way. Rather, "when you love a book, it changes you." That might prove useful to you, but the way you use it would rarely, if ever, match an author's intent.

The ordinary life of a book is to receive varied responses. Love, hate, indifference. All are part of what stories naturally elicit. "[S]tories are not true." Self-evident words, perhaps, but worth reiterating from an author whose untrue stories caused his life to be turned upside down. Fiction functions through its fictionality, not its verisimilitude.

I was disappointed that the only people who got to ask questions were male, because time ran out and the women hadn't gotten in line soon enough. Sir Rushdie was whisked away and I was not the only person in the theater who would have been willing to listen to him speak for hours more.

The Distinguished Lecture Part 1: Preparation

On November 20th, Boise State University put on one of their Distinguished Lecture series events. A free event, open to the public, at which interested members of the community could come and hear a speaker. On this particular night, the speaker was Sir Salman Rushdie.

I had been looking forward to this event since I first read about it in September. It seemed to me that I should have read something by him, but I hadn't. So, I took a break from my current project of reading the entirety of The Wheel of Time to read both The Satanic Verses and Joseph Anton. Lacking sufficient homework from my class this semester, I assigned myself those books.

I had heard of The Satanic Verses. I was only seven when the book was published, but I had heard about it from friends in high school more interested in politics than I, and I've more recently read a science fiction novel that explicitly references it (Zendegi by Greg Egan). And yet, in hearing about it, I had never caught on to how fantastical it was.

There is this idea that I have of serious literature, the kind that would win a nomination for the Booker prize. I felt that it had to be serious and realistic. Brimful of poetic imagery and perfectly placed metaphor. Perhaps I have been reading the wrong literature.

The Satanic Verses was a fascinating read. I found myself incredulous at what Rushdie was "getting away with" in regards to using the fantastic as a part of his story. Whether the fantastic was supposed to be a part of a man's madness or not, it still began with what had to be a miracle of two men surviving an airplane explosion at altitude.

I didn't see what made it an insult to any religion, but that could very well be simply because I was reading it as fiction. Since, you know, it is fiction.

I read Joseph Anton next, and found myself fascinated again, but for a different reason. This was a memoir. It is meant to be truthful; true to the memory of one man. I was aghast at the negative reactions of the British press. I wondered how I would have done in similar circumstances. Here was a man who stood by his words when those words brought him the threat of death. Not a hero, or a superman, but a writer.

In both books, I found sections that I found particularly moving or well-worded. Some paragraphs I read to my husband, usually those that included vivid description, which is something he wants to see more of in my writing. Others I savored to myself, especially the parts in The Satanic Verses that were about Alleluia Cone and Mount Everest. I'm still trying to come to terms with what I think is an important lesson from Joseph Anton, that seeking to be loved is not the right path.

I brought my husband to the lecture with me. And I brought anticipation and excitement. I didn't know what to expect from a Boise crowd. Would the Morrison Center be echoingly empty or filled with a smattering of students seeking extra credit and a few others who might come to see such a writer speak?

To be continued...

The Last Unicorn Tour: A Review

I like books. I've liked books as long as I can remember. And yet, despite spending the first eighteen years of my life next door to Chicago, I never went to an author event until last week.

Now that I live in Boise, I often bemoan the fact that the authors and musical acts that I really dig don't come here. For example, I was quite incensed to notice that Passion Pit was going to go to Salt Lake City, then skip a day and then play Spokane. That means that they drove right through Boise without bothering to stop.

Jerks.

(Just kidding, you're not jerks, Passion Pit - come to Boise!)

And when I did see notices of author events in the area, they weren't authors that I knew of or they weren't authors I was passionate about, even if they were big names. Okay, I did want to see Cheryl Strayed, but the tickets for that event were a) out of my budget and b) sold out in seconds.

But, as I wrote a few weeks ago, a magical concurrence of events occurred that allowed me to go to The Last Unicorn Tour and meet Peter S. Beagle on November 4th.

To be perfectly honest, I have attended one other author signing, if you want to count being dragged to the mall by my mom so she can get a signed cookbook from the Frugal Gourmet. I don't really count it, and what I remember most about that event was a long line emerging from the bookstore and wrapping around the upper level of the mall.

This was different. For one, the signing took place in a movie theater lobby, which was fairly dimly lit and subject to flows of people exiting their films and staring at the partially costumed hoard of people lined up in front of the tables of merchandise. I met some people in line, and attached myself to them in a way, since my husband didn't want to stand in line and I didn't want to be completely alone.

But when I got to the head of the line, where Peter sat and the skull glowered, I was alone, if only for a moment. I was tongue-tied and on the verge of tears. I wanted to speak eloquently, in a way that he would remember. But all I managed was to reference what he had said on the Writing Excuses podcast. "I must call myself a writer," I managed to stammer. And he told me to keep up the work. A quick photo-op and I was off to the theater to watch the screening.

A Q&A session preceded the film, and I later kicked myself for not asking the obvious question, "How is a raven like a writing desk?" But the questions were good, and Peter spoke in fascinating stories. It was a shame that the session had to end, because I doubt I was the only one ready to listen to Peter talk all night.

I cried during the film. At the sad parts, the happy parts and my favorite parts. I resolutely did not let myself get in the way of feeling and expressing those emotions. I revisited a film of my childhood and experienced it in a way that I never had been able to, on the big screen in a full theater.

I left feeling satisfied and glad that I had taken part.

The Best Kind of Coincidence

I listen to the weekly podcast “Writing Excuses.” I’ve been listening for almost a year now. I keep meaning to catch up on back episodes, because when they end I want more, but I haven’t gotten around to that yet. It seems like the only way to get old seasons is to download them one at a time and I haven’t had the patience for that.

I usually listen to them first thing on Monday at work, since they post on Sundays. But this week, for whatever reason, I didn’t. Maybe it’s because the latest update of iTunes has a red icon instead of a blue one and it might be freaking me out a bit. Or I was just busy doing work that required more focus than I can spend while listening. Or, quite possibly, I was so excited to see the name Peter Beagle attached to the week’s episode that I decided to savor it.

I have loved The Last Unicorn for as long as I can remember. I encountered the movie first, and I remember begging my mom to take me to the video store near our old house just to rent it again. The ones near our new house didn’t carry it. I could watch that movie over and over. It enchanted me, completely.

But for some reason, I didn’t realize that it was a book until I was almost a teenager. And when I did, I fell in love all over again. I have an old copy that I permanently borrowed from my dad’s office many years ago, and I have perhaps loved it a bit too hard. The book added to the movie without taking away any magic from the film. It was a new pleasure, but tied to the old childhood enchantment.

Although I came to read other novel’s by Peter S. Beagle, and enjoyed some of them more than others, none can approach the emotional attachment that I have for The Last Unicorn.

It was a complete coincidence that I listened to that podcast on Tuesday, and then decided to look up Peter S. Beagle online. I have recently sneaked onto Twitter and I thought I’d see if he did that. He did indeed, and I perused his tweets and retweets only to stumble upon something called lastunicorntour.com.

A tour? Of The Last Unicorn? In theaters? How did I not know this was a thing???

Well, I thought, they’ll never come to Boise…

Except, they kind of are. Because one week from Tuesday, The Last Unicorn will be in Meridian (right next door to Boise), and I had no idea it was happening.

And Peter S. Beagle will be there.

I am almost crying with delight.

Now all I have to do is not burst into tears at the signing table.

While I'm amazed that I didn't know this was happening, I am absolutely delighted that if I hadn't listened to that podcast, hadn't recently joined Twitter, hadn't looked Peter S. Beagle up online... I might not have known until after the tour passed through Idaho.

It is a delightful, enchanting coincidence.