I drove A1A to Miami Beach yesterday afternoon, following for part of the way a yellow Rolls Royce convertible. I parked outside the Miami Beach Convention Center and walked into the Americas Food & Beverage Show & Conference.
Strolling the exhibit floor I tasted everything from seaweed to noodle soup to ranch-flavored sunflower seeds. There were numerous energy drinks, alcohols, and flavored waters, including almond, made by a Frenchman (now living in LA) according to his grandmother's recipe.
Around 5 I drove across the causeway, passing a cruise ship heading out to sea. Leaving the Miami Dade College parking garage, I walked through the campus and came across Mitchell Kaplan escorting Calvin Trillin to his evening talk. I said hello, telling Trillin that we had met many years ago in Key West, where he had invited me, after our interview, to lunch with his family.
In class, I told my students that I had just run into the man I had quoted earlier in the course. (On "sneaking in the facts" - how you unobtrusively slip information into your narrative.) Since it was the last class, stories were told as well as read. Valerie, who had written about ascending Mount St. Victoire, mentioned that she had an apartment in Aix-en-Provence (where I once spent seven happy months as a student). After reading about her hometown of Austin, Elizabeth mentioned that she had a friend who was a pitcher for the Texas Rangers. Alexis, who didn't bring a story, said that she had grown up with Karen Russell, author of Swamplandia. Leia, who read about a visit to a synagogue in Washington, DC, told of going to a dance with the Cuban Hebrew congregation in Miami Beach where Hava Nagila turned into a conga line.
